{"id":1165419,"date":"2026-08-23T20:43:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1165419\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T20:43:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:43:24","slug":"the-new-life-of-jade-jones-the-welsh-hero-using-her-diagnosis-to-become-the-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1165419\/","title":{"rendered":"The new life of Jade Jones, the Welsh hero using her diagnosis to become the best"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 33-year-old’s love of a scrap has taken her down a new path<\/p>\n

09:34, 23 Aug 2026Updated 09:35, 23 Aug 2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jade Jones is starting to make a name for herself as a boxer(Image: Misfits Boxing)<\/p>\n

The surroundings might be different, but the fire inside Jade Jones is clearly still burning strong.<\/p>\n

“I love a fight, I love a scrap. I’m not scared to get stuck in,” she tells WalesOnline. That passion appears unblemished by the challenges of the last couple of years. After seeing her dreams of a third Olympic gold medal dashed on two separate occasions, the latest being in Paris back in 2024, Jones felt her race in taekwondo, the sport that she’d given everything to since the age of eight, had finally been run.<\/p>\n

“I was kind of chasing that history and you don’t realise at the time, but it did become a bit monotonous,” she said. “I loved the sport, I loved fighting, but I didn’t realise I kind of got a little bit stale there.”<\/p>\n

But the woman once nicknamed the Headhunter, a name bestowed on her due to her fondness for a headshot, wasn’t ready to walk away completely.<\/p>\n

“When I left, I didn’t feel ready to give up sport. I still had so much fire and drive and fight in me,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But I couldn’t do another Olympic cycle and stay in the same place. So yeah, boxing kind of sprung on me out of nowhere.”<\/p>\n

The move into boxing has seen Jade trade kicks for punches, although some old habits clearly still die hard.<\/p>\n

“I do kind of have the same problem,” she laughs. “I always forget to go to the body and I am always hunting for that, you know, that killer shot, that knockout. The damage shots, if you know what I mean.”<\/p>\n

So far, it’s actually been pretty effective. Jones won by knockout in the second round of her debut against American reality star and singer Egypt Criss back in March, and then saw off FederiKita, an Argentinian influencer, back in May.<\/p>\n

This latest test in Newcastle on September 12, however, promises to be her toughest assignment yet as a boxer.<\/p>\n

Awaiting her in the ring is former MMA and current Powerslap star Sheena Bathory, with the Misfits super middleweight title on the line.<\/p>\n

But the competitive edge that yielded so much success in the past means reaching the very top is the minimum in terms of ambition.<\/p>\n

“The first thing I said to Mams [Taylor], the promoter, was ‘I’m gonna be the face of Misfits, Women’s Misfits’,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There’s probably a million people that have said that to him, but I don’t do things by half.<\/p>\n

“I’ve come into this thinking, ‘I wanna take over, you know, in this space and I wanna be the best that there’s been in this Misfits world for now’.”<\/p>\n

It’s clearly full steam ahead for Jones, who admits that having to prove herself all over again was a big reason she gravitated to boxing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Britain’s Jade Jones reacts after losing against North Macedonia’s Miljana Reljikj in Paris (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n

Jones admitted at the time she “didn’t have the balls” to win following her shock first round exit to Miljana Reljikj in Paris, and admits the weight of expectation that had built up from her previous success was part of the reason.<\/p>\n

“Maybe if I won I probably would’ve thought, ‘Oh, let’s go for four’. That’s kind of my mentality.<\/p>\n

“But as soon as I lost, I knew straight away. I came off and I was like, ‘I’m done’.<\/p>\n

“It’s not like I gave my best performance and I just wasn’t the best on the day.<\/p>\n

“Mentally I was just empty. There was nothing left in me. The pressure to try to create that history made me feel like a failure if it didn’t happen rather than, you know, having the will to win.<\/p>\n

“I put too much pressure, too much expectation and it almost became not fun anymore. It would’ve almost helped if I could see the bigger picture and realise it wasn’t my life.<\/p>\n

“Whereas in that moment it was like, this means everything and I’m gonna explode or something if I don’t get it. Whereas when you actually step back- You realise the, the bigness of life. There’s so much more to life.<\/p>\n

“I probably would’ve relaxed into it a little bit, enjoyed it, had a few other interests instead of just, you know, like being so, so obsessive. So there, there is a very fine balance.”<\/p>\n

Jones’ recent ADHD diagnosis, she admits, was probably one of the factors that prevented her from seeing that all-important bigger picture, and similarly helped to explain other facets of her early life.<\/p>\n

“In school<\/a> and growing up, I used to struggle all the time but didn’t understand what it was,” she said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jade Jones already has two wins to her name and is bidding for a title in September(Image: Misfits Boxing)<\/p>\n

“And even in taekwondo, to be fair, people helped me manage a lot and I didn’t quite understand.<\/p>\n

“You just assume everyone feels like that or acts like that or whatever. I just feel like it’s very lucky I found sport, because that kind of caters for ADHD and almost medicates it.<\/p>\n

“Whereas even I think when I first tried to start college or first tried to do like work experience, I just left. I couldn’t do it.<\/p>\n

“It was just like, ‘No, I can’t do it’. Now I’m realising it’s because of the ADHD.<\/p>\n

“It’s tough and still you have to manage it, struggle with it. But I genuinely believe it’s the ADHD that’s helped me hyper-focus and obsess on these sports to become the best.<\/p>\n

“When you’re hyper-focused and you’ve got a goal, you commit yourself in a way most people can’t.<\/p>\n

“You can use it to your advantage then. I kind of understand my brain now.<\/p>\n

“If it gets overwhelmed, it needs to be like this. Even on fight day, you know, I’ll be very particular on like certain things. It’s just channelling it in the right way, and then making the most of my crazy brain.”<\/p>\n

It was her grandfather Martin who set her on the road to sporting stardom, and his support was the one constant throughout her career over the years, although the emotions of that final Olympics clearly took a strain on their relationship.<\/p>\n

\"Jade<\/p>\n

Jade Jones with her Grandad at the 2016 Olympics(Image: Owen Humphreys\/PA)<\/p>\n

“It was hard after the Olympics,” Jones admits. “Obviously it was mine and my grandad’s thing, and we were both really disappointed, again, because of how I mentally handled it.<\/p>\n

“So I kind of like pulled away from him a little bit. Not, fully pulled away, but I don’t know. We were finding it hard because we were both upset and dealing with it in our own ways.<\/p>\n

“If anything, I kind of dealt with it on my own. I went on loads of holidays. I just kind of just almost ran away from my problems at first.<\/p>\n

“With the boxing, at first he didn’t quite understand, and then it didn’t take long until he was coming to all the sessions, and he was just as, um, hooked on the boxing as he was on the taekwondo.<\/p>\n

“He would always come to watch the spars and stuff.”<\/p>\n

Martin sadly passed away in November, and never got to see Jones step into the ring as a boxer.<\/p>\n

His memory is clearly never far from her mind.<\/p>\n

“It’s just gutting really,” she says.<\/p>\n

“He’s seen this journey from the scratch. All my family are very supportive, but it was my grandad that would be like, ‘Can I come and watch training?’<\/p>\n

“At the time I was like, ‘Bloody hell, I’m 31,’ and I’m taking my grandad to this bloody hardcore boxing gym to watch me! I felt like a little kid!<\/p>\n

“But it was lovely to have them moments, and it’s a shame he didn’t actually get to see me in the ring.<\/p>\n

“I think if anything, he’d be so proud that I mentally handled it because he used to say, ‘there’s no doubt you’ll be good, but it’s just whether you’ve got it up top’.<\/p>\n

“You know, because obviously of what happened in the Olympics. So I’d like to think I’ve proved to him that I have.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 33-year-old’s love of a scrap has taken her down a new path 09:34, 23 Aug 2026Updated 09:35,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1165420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,92794,79,16,15],"class_list":["post-1165419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-jade-jones","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117146775841050675","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}