Maïva Hamadouche (born 4 November 1989) is a French professional boxer and police officer who held the IBF female super-featherweight title from November 2016 to November 2021. At regional level, she held the French female lightweight title in 2014 and the European female lightweight title in 2015.[1]
Life and career
Hamadouche was born in Albi, in the Tarn department. She was raised by a single mother in a family of 6 children.[2] With a baccalauréat economique et social she first planned to study law but abandoned this idea because of family and economic difficulties.[2] Also interested in the army and more precisely in demining, she was received in the contest of the National Active Non-Commissioned Officers School of Saint-Maixent.[2] Not wishing to leave France to continue to devote herself to boxing, she finally decided, at age 19, to make a career in the police.[2] So, in 2009, she joined the Rouen police academy.[3]
She worked for two years in Asnières-sur-Seine then joined in 2014 the Compagnie de sécurisation et d'intervention of Paris.[3] In March 2018 she received the bronze honour medal for courage and devotion from the city of Paris for having rescued in June 2017 a young Mauritanian migrant, injured by a driver, by applying a tourniquet on his leg.[4]
Sports career
After practicing football, she started to train savate at the age of 14, and also practiced boxing afterwards.[2][3] She became a professional in 2013.[2] She trained in Saint-Juéry at the beginning,[5][6] then in Clichy after moving to Paris, having Sot Mezaache as her coach.[2]
She is seven-time vice-champion of France in savate and English boxing, eventually opting for the second discipline despite her debut in French boxing.[3]
In March 2015, in Milan, she became European lightweight champion, while the title was vacant, beating Italy's Anita Torti by throw of the towel in the 5th round[7] then she retained his title in May in Clichy, winning on points in ten rounds against the same competitor.[8]
In November 2016, Maïva Hamadouche won her first IBF World Super featherweight title,[9] still vacant, winning by points in 10 rounds in Paris against the American Jennifer Salinas.[6] She became the third Frenchwoman to win that title after Myriam Lamare and Anne-Sophie Mathis.[9] She retained the title in January 2017 against Milena Koleva, from Bulgaria,[9] in May 2017 against Anahí Ester Sánchez, from Argentina,[9] then in 2018 against the French Myriam Dellal.[10] In 4 December 2018, Maïva Hamadouche kept her IBF world champion title, for the fifth time, against Brazil's Viviane Obenauf.[11]
Taking advantage of a rule change which allowed professional boxers to compete in the Olympics, Hamadouche qualified for the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games only to lose in her opening contest to Finland's Mira Potkonen.[12]
On 5 November 2021, she returned to professional competition to take on WBO female super-featherweight World champion Mikaela Mayer in a contest that saw both women's titles and the inaugural Ring female super-featherweight belt on the line. Mayer prevailed by unanimous decision.[13]
Hamadouche announced her retirement from boxing in May 2023 due to an eye injury that would no longer allow her to fight.[14]
