Victoria Noelia Bustos sets her sights on Katie Taylor’s title
Katie Taylor’s next opponent insists she is capable of beating boxing’s Golden Girl
‘I WENT TO THE COACH BUT HE TOLD ME HE DIDN’T TRAIN GIRLS’
AS IF it was needed, this past week provided yet more evidence that the fascination with Katie Taylor goes well beyond the normal reach of women’s boxing. The Ring magazine, the sport’s bible, ran a weighty feature on Bray’s Golden Girl under the headline ‘Humble Conqueror.’
It is rare enough that Ring deem any Irish fighter worthy of such attention, rarer still when its focus turns to a female fighter. But that is what makes Taylor unique. She can capture the imagination while the sport itself struggles to gain traction among the wider public.
Next Saturday night in Brooklyn’s Barclays Centre, Taylor will enter the ring and face Victoria Noelia Bustos, the IBF lightweight champion. It is the first step in Taylor’s mission to unify the women’s lightweight division by the end of this year (she currently holds the WBA belt). Brazil’s Rose Valente, the WBO champion, and Belgium’s Delfine Persoon, who holds the WBC title, are also in her crosshairs.
Bustos has been champion of the world since September 2013, winning the belt little more than two years after her professional debut. Despite a reign that has included five successful title defences, she has grown accustomed to operating in the outer margins of Argentinian sport. When a request came from Ireland for an interview, she seemed taken aback. Within her own country, next weekend’s unification bout has made little impact. There’s a World Cup coming up, after all, and Jorge Sampaoli’s efforts to revive the Albicelestes, and the recent 6-1 friendly defeat to Spain, are much more of a public concern in a football-obsessed nation.
She hails from Rosario, the city in the north of Argentina that gave the world Che Guevara and Lionel Messi. Growing up, she was more interested in volleyball, handball and athletics.
‘I must have tried every sport at some point buy my heart lies with boxing,’ she insists. However, she was late in discovering her life’s passion. She was 21 before she stepped inside the ring — and it seemed that the sport found her, rather than Bustos seeking it out.
‘I was walking on the sidewalk in Rosario one day when I saw a notice for a boxing festival at Club Sportivo Alberdi. I went to the night and saw several girls and boys fighting. As I watched, I thought this is the sport for me. I spoke to the coach there about starting the sport. He answered that he did not train women. But I managed to convince him and a few months later, I had my first fight.
Bustos, who turned 29 in January, knew that she had to make up for lost time. ‘Every day, from the moment I came into the sport, I have been inside a boxing gym, training,’ she explains.
What she didn’t know at the time was that boxing was in her blood. Both her father and her uncle had been decent amateur fighters, although nothing at the level which she would go on and reach. ‘They didn’t get very far in the sport, just stayed amateur. But until I became a boxer, I never knew that they had both fought as amateurs.’
After winning five bouts within her first year as a professional, she was given the opportunity to fight for a world title, against compatriot Erica Farias, the WBC champion at the time. It was the first time Bustos boxed outside of Rosario, as she had to travel down to San Fernando, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
‘After my fifth fight, I got the call from Buenos Aires to fight the world champion. It was the fight that made me known. They thought with such little experience and so few fights, I would be an easy opponent, but I held out until the tenth round.’
Even though Farias handed Bustos her first loss, the resilience and skill she displayed in defeat made others sit up and take notice. A year later, she faced compatriot Ana Esteche in her hometown with the IBF lightweight title at stake. And this time, she won by unanimous decision.
‘It was very special for me to win the world title, and to do it in Rosario,’ Bustos explains. ‘From the moment I walked into that boxing festival, I though this is my sport and that I will be world champion one day. I never gave up on that, trained for it every single day and that is why I became world champion.
‘I always believed that I was going to be world champion because I always knew what I wanted and the sacrifices I was willing to make in order to become the world champion that I am today. Everything that one aims for in life, and believes with their heart, it is not impossible.’
Unlike Taylor, who is able to concentrate on honing her craft fulltime in the forests of Connecticut, Bustos supplements her fighting income by doing the books of her father’s painting company while also giving boxing classes to young girls at the Commerce Employee Union in Rosario, where she is trained by coach Marcelo Botta.
Under Botta’s expertise, her rise through the ranks has been eyecatching. And there has been no ceiling on her ambition. In the summer of 2016, she was afforded the chance to gain some revenge on Erica Farias for that defeat four years earlier. Farias had moved up a weight division, to super-lightweight, where she held the WBC title. And even though Bustos fought her in front of her home crowd at Rosario, she again failed to get the decision.
Two of her four defeats in a 22bout career have come at the hands of the same fighter in Farias. And she has yet to stop or knock anyone out in her time as a professional fighter. On the face of things, Bustos doesn’t possess the punching power of Jessica McCaskill who caught Taylor once or twice during her first defence in York Hall back in December.
There is also the factor that Bus- tos has never fought outside of Argentina — and never fought in front of the sort of crowd (15,000 or more) likely to be in the Barclays Centre to watch Danny Jacobs take another step back up the middleweight ladder
‘It is the first time that I have to go out of the country to fight, but I am very happy to be able to have this chance. I have waited nine years for this opportunity to fight in the USA and am glad to do it against another world champion in Katie Taylor.’
Taylor won the WBA title by beating another Argentinian, Anahi Sanchez and Bustos watched that fight. ‘I saw that fight. I like her as a boxer. She is very neat in her boxing and her technique.’
And while Bustos is seen as just another obstacle as Taylor aims to dominate the professional ranks in the same way which she did the amateurs, the Argentine doesn’t accept that role in the script, saying that everything she has achieved in boxing is based on her mental strength.
‘For the athlete, how she is away from the ring influences her desire to train and the tranquillity when it comes to competing. When they take away the stool, you are alone in the ring and if your head is not where it should be, you will end up losing.’
Outside of the Commerce Employees Union in Rosario, there are few who believe that Bustos’ fate next weekend will be anything other than a defeat. But perhaps if she was to cause a sensation and inflict the first professional defeat on Taylor, Argentina will have no choice but to start noticing one of the six female world champions they currently have in their midst.