No stranger to big fights as a two-time Olympian and former world amateur champion, Canadian boxer Tammara (Tamm) Thibeault looks forward to stepping into the ring Friday at Madison Square Garden.
The 28-year-old middleweight from Shawinigan, Que., will be in good company in New York on the all-female card airing on Netflix.
Most Valuable Promotions says the show will set a Guinness World Record for most world championship belts contested on a single fight card, male or female, with 17 world titles on the line across five bouts.
"Who knew that I'd be on such a big platform so quickly?" said Thibeault, who has fought just twice as a pro. "But I'm honoured and I'm excited to be part of such an iconic card."
MVP was founded in 2021 by YouTuber-turned-fighter Jake Paul and Canadian sports entrepreneur Nakisa Bidarian, with Paul boxing as well as promoting. Thibeault signed on in December, just ahead of her pro debut.
"Nice guy," Thibeault said of Paul. "Very entrepreneurial, very brave and bold in the way that he does things. I really like that about him and the company."
The MSG main event sees Ireland Katie Tayl (24-1-0) put her undisputed super-lightweight title on the line against Puerto Rican Amanda (The Real Deal) Serrano (47-3-1), the unified featherweight world champion, in a trilogy fight.
In boxing lingo, undisputed means holding all the titles in the four championship belt era simultaneously. Taylor holds the WBA, WBO, WBC and IBF crowns at 140 pounds
Unified means holding more than one belt in the division simultaneously (but not all four).
Taylor won the first two meetings with Serrano, by split decision in April 2022 at Madison Square Garden and by unanimous decision in November 2024 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Thibeault (2-0-0) takes on American Mary Casamassa (6-0-0), ranked the No. 1 contender at 160 pounds by the WBC and IBF and No. 1 among super-middleweights (168 pounds) by the WBA and WBO, in an eight-round bout. For the third time for Thibeault, the fight will be contested with three-minute rounds.
Thibeault is ranked No. 4 by the WBA and WBO, No. 5 by the IBF and No. 8 by the WBC.
Thibeault is currently based in England, where she is a few months away from completing her master's degree in urban design and urban planning. She earned her BA in the same discipline from Concordia University.
She laughs when asked if she is good at time management.
"Some days. Some days not so much," she said. "I think everything has its time. Sometimes I prioritize university. Sometimes I prioritize boxing. It just really depends on where I am in terms of both."
Living in Europe was also "a bucket-list thing."
"Being able to travel the world, see something different, different cultures, different countries. Just expand a little bit my world view," she said.
Also on the card, Canadian Jessica (The Cobra) Camara (14-4-1) faces England's WBC interim super-lightweight champion Chantelle (Il Capo) Cameron (20-1-0). Camara, a native of Cambridge, Ont., now based out of Montreal, fought England's Caroline Dubois for the WBC lightweight title last time out in January in a bout that ended in a technical draw due to a clash of heads.
Thibeault opened her pro career in December in Orlando with a four-round decision over Natasha (The Nightmare) Spence of Cambridge, Ont. In March, she recorded a first-round knockout of American Sonya Dreiling in Toronto in a scheduled six-round bout.
After fighting three-minute rounds as an amateur, Thibeault says it just felt right to stay the course as a pro.
"I want to be a trailblazer in my sport," she said. "If this is the way to do it, then so be it."
She is glad women have a choice to fight two- or three-minute rounds as pros.
Sport runs in her family. Father Patrick Thibeault, a receiver out of Saint Mary's University, played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders after being selected in the third round (20th overall) of the 2002 CFL draft.
It was in Regina that Tamm started boxing at age nine, inspired by her father's off-season training regime.
"I definitely fell in love with it quickly," said the six-footer. "I also didn't know how far it would take me, to be honest. Being able to make a career out of it is not something that I anticipated."
The sport really grabbed hold of her when women’s boxing was added to the Olympic program for the 2012 Games in London.
Thibeault reached the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics and went on to win a world amateur title in 2022, as well as gold medals at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and 2023 Pan Am Games. At the Paris Olympics, she dropped a split decision in the round of 16 to Cindy Ngamba — a Cameroonian representing the Olympic Refugee Team — who went on to win bronze.
Thibeault is technically still eligible to compete at the Olympics, but hasn’t decided whether she’ll make a third run at gold.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2025
Neil Davidson, The Canadian Press
