Even now, in her 10th year as a professional fighter, Simangele “Smash” Hadebe cannot rationalise, or get used to, being punched in the face.
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“During a fight, it doesn’t feel good at all,” says the flyweight contender.
“Am I getting knocked out? It tests you. Can you fight under pressure? It does scare me, but the thought of hitting you back motivates me.”
Fortunately, as Clinton van der Berg writes on his Got Game website, Hadebe tends to be the one dishing out the blows on account of being a smart, polished athlete who knows how to look after herself in the confined, dangerous contours of a boxing ring.
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Early next month she will travel to Mexico to face her greatest test, a bout against Mexico’s Gabriela Sanchez Saavedra for the WBC Silver belt.
It’s the penultimate step before a challenge for the world championship outright. More importantly, perhaps, a winning result will help her long-held ambitions crystalise and lead to the sort of reward she deserves after a life of hardship and unspeakable abuse.
Aged 31, Hadebe has somehow come out the other side of a brutal childhood defined by a broken family and years of sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbour.
She broke her silence about it some years ago and now campaigns as an advocate against child abuse. It’s a powerful motivator for the flyweight for whom boxing has provided purpose and a compelling means of telling her story.
“She was a broken girl,” says Colleen McAusland, her manager (and matriarch), who looks after an 18-strong stable of boxers in Johannesburg’s deep south with a care and tenderness seldom found in boxing. Five of her boxers are females, all trying to get ahead in a sport still in its nascent phase for women.
She and Hadebe have worked together since 2018.
“Her whole life is boxing. It’s all she does … she lives it,” says McAusland, who treats “Smash” like a daughter.
“I’ve managed a lot of females, and she’s a cut above.”
Hadebe and McAusland’s late son Keaton, who died three years ago, were like brother and sister.
His death devastated Hadebe for whom tragedy has been a constant companion.
Her first trainer, Themba Zulu, who wasn’t interested in training her initially but soon came round when he saw how accomplished she was, died after a long illness in 2018.
Two years later, Lionel Hunter, her next trainer, also died.
As the old saying goes, life hits hard, but boxing teaches you to hit back harder. Boxing was Hadebe’s refuge and she trained hard and fought hard, even beating Gabisile Tshabalala, one of her early heroes, in her sixth professional bout. She used to have Tshabalala’s poster on the gym wall and was nervous of the prospect of boxing her in 2018, but nevertheless produced an accomplished performance to narrowly beat her on points.
Going back to the very start, the hit film Million Dollar Baby, which came out in 2004, stirred something inside Hadebe. She was drawn to the story of an underdog amateur who is helped by a boxing trainer to achieve her dream of becoming a professional.
She was an athlete at Laban Mothlabi High School in Kwa Thema, near Springs, but the thought of boxing had never occurred to her – until she watched the film.
“People said, ‘you’re too small, too fragile’,” she explained ahead of a sparring session last week.
“I wanted to prove them wrong.”
McAusland also believes Hadebe saw boxing as a way to help repair her broken sense of self, and to give her life meaning.
She joined Zulu’s gym in Springs, but was such an outlier that she never had a single amateur fight before turning professional in 2016. Even then, her introduction was unusual: she drew her debut fight and then challenged for the SA title in her second outing. She lost on points, one of just three defeats in a 19-fight career.
For years she was the only female fighter in the gym, but she preferred sparring men anyway.
“I don’t switch on when I spar girls,” she says disarmingly.
“That only happens when I spar the guys.”
Even now, her main sparring partner is Sikho Nqothole, the world class super flyweight, while the underrated Khangalani Jack works her corner.
Happily, she has many role models, among them top women’s fighters Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, plus established male stars like now retired Manny Pacquiao, Vasily Lomachenko and Terence Crawford.
She admits a touch of envy about the overseas fight scene, where women tend to fight often. Inactivity is poison to professional boxers, and it’s something that has plagued Hadebe in recent years.
Fights have been signed and cancelled, promoters have made false promises and she’s been caught in the maelstrom of difficulty that afflicts many South African boxers.
She’s had only a single fight in each of the past two years, when ordinarily she should be in her prime as an athlete.
“It is a career killer and I’m disappointed,” she admits, “but things are looking up.”
She’s motivated by more than simply getting ahead. As one of the country’s best women fighters, she is seen as an inspiration, particularly by girls from impoverished communities.
“A lot of girls, and my gym mates, look up to me, but I want to also change my own life and my family’s life.”
In Mexico, she stands to earn the best purse of her career, but also claim recognition as one of the best flyweights in the world.
Travelling to Saavedra’s back yard holds no fears. Not after the life she has lived.
“I’m 100% ready. I don’t care about anything else; it will be just the two of us in the ring. My problem is just her, nothing else.”
Given what she has had to overcome to this point, “Smash” thrives under hardship.
A showdown against a monster from Mexico is the least of her worries.
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