Maïva Hamadouche


Maïva Hamadouche is a French professional boxer and police officer. She has held the IBF female junior-lightweight title since 2016 and challenged once for the WBC female lightweight title in 2015. At regional level, she held the France female lightweight title in 2014 and the European female lightweight title in 2015. As of November 2019, she is ranked as the world's second best active junior lightweight by BoxRec.

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. With a baccalauréat economique et social she first planned to study law but abandoned this idea because of family and economic difficulties. 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.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. So, in 2009,she joined the Rouen police academy.
She worked for two years in Asnières-sur-Seine then joined in 2014 the Compagnie de sécurisation et d'intervention of Paris. 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..

Sports career

After practicing football, she started to train savate at the age of 14, and also practiced boxing afterwards.,. She became a professional in 2013. She trained in Saint-Juéry at the beginning, then in Clichy after moving to Paris, having Sot Mezaache as her coach.
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.
In March 2015, in Milan, she became European lightweight champion, while the title was vacant, beating t Italy's Anita Torti by throw of the towel in the 5th round then she retained his title in May in Clichy, winning on points in ten rounds against the same competitor.
In November 2016, Maïva Hamadouche won her first IBF World Super featherweight title, still vacant,winning by points in 10 rounds in Paris against the American Jennifer Salinas. She became the third Frenchwoman to win that title after Myriam Lamare and Anne-Sophie Mathis. She retained the title in January 2017 against Milena Koleva, from Bulgaria, in May 2017 against Anahi Esther Sanchez, from Argentina, then in 2018 against the French Myriam Dellal.In 4 December 2018, Maïva Hamadouche kept her IBF world champion title, for the fifth time, against Brazil's Viviane Obenauf.
She has the nickname "El veneno".In 2016, her promoter was Malamine Koné. Since September 2018 her promoter is Brahim Asloum