Catherine Phiri is a Zambian

professional boxer Professional boxing, or prizefighting, is regulated, sanctioned boxing. Professional boxing bouts are fought for a purse that is divided between the boxers as determined by contract. Most professional bouts are supervised by a regulatory autho ...

. She held the WBC female

bantamweight Bantamweight is a weight class in combat sports. For boxing, the range is above and up to . In kickboxing, a bantamweight fighter generally weighs between . In MMA, bantamweight is . The name for the class is derived from bantam chickens. Bra ...

title from 2016 to 2017 and challenged twice for the WBC female

super-bantamweight Super bantamweight, also known as junior featherweight, is a weight class in professional boxing, contested from and up to . There were attempts by boxing promoters in the 1920s to establish this weight class, but few sanctioning organizations or ...

title in 2017 and 2019. As of May 2022, she is ranked as the world's tenth best active female super-bantamweight by

BoxRec BoxRec or boxrec.com is a website dedicated to holding updated records of professional and amateur boxers, both male and female. It also maintains a MediaWiki-based encyclopaedia of boxing. The objective of the site is to document every profe ...

Boxing career

Catherine debuted on 25 July 2011 when she defeated Zambian boxer Esther Chalwe at the National Sports Development Centre in Lusaka.Catherine Phiri on Boxrec.com
/ref> She won the

WBC female bantamweight title The following is a list of WBC female world champions certificated by the World Boxing Council (WBC). Stand: June 3, 2020. r – Champion relinquished title. s – Champion stripped of title. On July 30, 2011, Ana María Torres won the first f ...

by defeating reigning champion

Yazmín Rivas Yazmín Rosita Rivas Hernandez is a Mexican professional boxer. She has held world championships in three weight classes, including the WBA female super flyweight title in 2005; the IBF female bantamweight title from 2011 to 2013; the WBC fem ...

on 30 January 2016 in Mexico. She became the first Zambian to win a WBC title. Her 13th fight was on 27 August 2016 at Lusaka's Government Complex where she retained her WBC title with a first-round stoppage victory against Gabisile Tshabalala.Catherine Phiri’s camp slams’ Tshabalala
'' LusakaTimes'', 28 August 2016 She lost the title in her next fight, suffering the second defeat of her career against

Mariana Juárez María Anastasia Trejo (born 29 January 1980), better known as Mariana Juárez, is a Mexican professional boxer. She is a former two-division world champion, having held the WBC female flyweight title from 2011 to 2012 and the WBC female bantamw ...

on 1 April 2017, in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of ...

, Mexico. On 17 December 2016, she was honoured by the World Boxing Council for being the first boxer from Africa to win the WBC bantamweight title. On 2 November 2017, she was defeated by

Fatuma Zarika Zarika Njeri Kanghete (born 13 March 1985), commonly known as Fatuma Zarika, is a Kenyan professional boxer. She held the WBC female super-bantamweight Super bantamweight, also known as junior featherweight, is a weight class in professional box ...

in a WBC super-bantamweight title fight, losing by

unanimous decision A unanimous decision (UD) is a winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts and other sports involving striking and submission in which all three judges agree on which fighter ...

with the judges' scorecards reading 97–92, 98–91 and 99–92. Zarika was the defending champion.

Awards

Catherine Phiri was also given an academic scholarship from the Justina Mutale Foundations Scholarship Programme on 9 June 2016. She is expected to go and study Sports Management at the European School of Economics in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. President of Zambia Edgar Chagwa Lungu honoured Catherine Phiri with the Zambia insignia of meritorious achievement award for her accomplishment on Africa Freedom Day, 25 May 2017.

Professional boxing record

References

External links

* Year of birth missing (living people) Date of birth missing (living people) Living people Zambian women boxers World boxing champions Sportspeople from Lusaka Bantamweight boxers Super-bantamweight boxers African Boxing Union champions World Boxing Council champions {{Zambia-boxing-bio-stub