Ellie Scotney has been waiting for a moment like this for so long that she is still expecting someone to tell her Friday’s unification with Yamileth Mercado at Madison Square Garden is a wind-up.

The 27-year-old Ring junior featherweight champion, who also holds the WBO and IBF belts, kicks off her new deal with MVP against the WBC queen Mercado in New York.

With the trilogy fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano topping the bill, it is one of the most important shows in women’s boxing history and Scotney is still struggling to believe she is part of it.

“I keep messing around saying that I know I’m going to get a call any minute now,” Scotney tells The Ring.

“The person on the other end of the line will say ‘this isn’t really happening, you’re actually boxing at the Indigo at the o2 and you’re somewhere in the middle of the card'.

“Because if I could write down my dream fight, dream venue, who is headlining, all the details, then it would genuinely look like this.

“We sit here and we wait for moments like this. And I've been pleading, I've been knocking on the door, and it's been opened for me. So I've got to walk the walk now and embrace it.”

Scotney is currently 10-0 after nearly five years as a professional, which kicked off during the Covid-19 pandemic with Eddie Hearn and Matchroom.

As such, her first two professional outings took place inside the lockdown bubbles with women’s boxing enjoying a huge upturn in popularity during the Covid era. Promoters, unable to generate money through ticket sales, realised they could secure high-level women’s fights for a fraction of the cost of less meaningful men’s ones. Television audiences, kept inside due to the pandemic, lapped it up.

Scotney is one of many champions to have noticed that popularity waning over the past couple of years but believes Friday night’s event will provide a much-needed boost to the profile of women’s boxing.

“Lockdown was a blessing because we were all locked in,” she says. “People that necessarily wouldn't watch women's boxing were watching it and it was cheaper for the promoter to put us on and the fights were catching fire.

“We were riding the crest of a wave at that point but as it went on, those opportunities have dried up for many of the girls.

“So it takes people like Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor for us all to follow suit. MVP have come in and they've really made their stance clear on women’s boxing and I feel like you're seeing that. They're signing more and more talent and it wouldn’t be surprising to see all females under one roof.”

But there is no denying that Scotney’s initial outing with MVP is something of a baptism of fire against the experienced Mercado, who will be taking part in her 12th world title fight on Friday night.

Although she and Scotney were born on the very same day, March 16, 1998, Mercado has had 17 more professional fights and completed over 100 more rounds than the Catford ace.

“I’ve been watching her for a long time,” Scotney says. “We tried to get her for my first ever world title shot.

“She’s unorthodox in many ways and will do things that not many of my other opponents have done so it will be up to me to figure that out.

“She’s been in with the likes of Amanda Serrano up at featherweight so she has good experience and she’s coming in as a champion and that’s always a different threat.

“It’s up to me to rise to that and find the answer.”