Boxer Candace Warren didn’t win her first bout, but her nose put on the best show.
On Sat. May 10, the 16-year-old Korah Collegiate and Vocational School student took on 32-year-old Roxanne Charbonneau at the Live Olympic Style-Boxing event hosted by Top Glove Boxing Academy in Sudbury.
Though Charbonneau won the bout 3-0, Warren had Sudbury coaches come up to her after the bout to congratulate and compliment her.
“They came up and told her they couldn’t believe this was her first fight, how well she did, that she had a really good style,” Philip Bye, Warren’s coach at the Sault Boxing Club, said.
Bye said Warren’s style in the ring with very offensive, she’ll go straight at her opponent.
“She’s very aggressive, she doesn’t wait, she comes right out at you,” Bye said. “She’s a hard hitter. For her first fight she did really well.”
Despite her style, she is very tight-lipped and modest over the phone from her part-time job at Tim Horton’s.
“I think I could have done better,” said Warren, who started boxing a year and a half ago as a way to get in shape. “If it wasn’t my first fight I would have known what to expect.”
One aspect of the fight she didn’t expect was the intensity of the hits Charbonneau delivered.
“She was just hitting me harder then I expected, so it just surprised me,” Warren said. “Her punches didn’t really hurt that much, it was just really tiring.”
Bye admits in their sparing practises he could hit her harder, and Warren wishes he would.
“We joke and I say, ‘that one must of hurt,’ but she says, ‘not that one didn’t hurt,’” Bye said. “After the fight she said the boxer in Sudbury was hitting her harder then I hit her. So she said, ‘when we spare you have to pick it up a little bit.’”
‘Picking it up a little bit,’ is a little nerve-racking because Warren’s nose is very sensitive and is quick to bleed, Bye said.
“My nose bleeds really easily,” Warren said. “So (Charbonneau) just tapped me on the nose in the first round and it started bleeding, and it wouldn’t stop.”
Warren said she didn’t notice the blood because she was fighting, but she could tell the audience enjoyed it. Her bout with Charbonneau earned the two women Best Fight of the Night and a trophy for it.
“Out of the seven fights that were there, me and my opponent got best fight of the night because it was best quality and the audience liked it the most,” Warren said. “I think it’s because of my bloody nose made it exciting to watch.”
Though she is only in Grade 11, Warren plans on becoming a criminologist. She said her goal for boxing is to fight as much as possible. Her inspiration is Canadian-Olympic boxer Mary Spencer.
“(Spencer) started boxing at 17 and she went to the Olympics,” Warren said. “That’s what inspired me to start competing.”
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