Just when you thought AFLW legend Tayla Harris couldn’t get any cooler, she’s taken out boxing’s Australian Female Middleweight Title in Melbourne.
Harris has swapped footballs for fighting in a second round knockout match against kickboxing star Margarite Butcher.
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The pair were scheduled to go head-to-head for an eight round competitive match, but Butcher was ultimately defeated by the AFL legend, news.com.au reports.
Tayla Harris is currently undefeated in the sport, with six wins and only one draw against Sarah Dwyer last year during the Female Australian middleweight title.
“I’ve been working a lot on power and trying to make a statement in boxing in Australia,” she told GQ before the fight. “Obviously, I’ve got ambitions to fight around the world, so I’ll try my best to make a statement and whether that means a knockout or just a really clinical fight, that’s what I’ll aim to do.”
Honestly, are we even surprised anymore that Tayla Harris is a phenomenal athlete? Surely not. At 22, Tayla Harris has already cemented herself in the history books of two wildly different competitive sports.
Although her opponent has only had three fights in her professional boxing career, Butcher is also a seasoned professional in the kickboxing world, with 16 fights to her name including 10 wins.
Harris, who let’s not forget is also a professional football player, is now ranked seventh in the World Boxing Association’s female middleweight division. To get to this level in any sport is impressive and to do it twice is absolutely outstanding, but Harris wasn’t about to boast about her latest sporting achievement.
“I wanted to make a statement,” she bluntly said in an interview after the fight.
She went on to announce that she’d “absolutely” be interested in continuing to fight local and internationally ranked athletes, but made it clear that her football career will remain her top priority.
