Ring Magazine super bantamweight champion, Ellie Scotney, wants to prove exactly why she is the best 122lb fighter on the planet when she returns to action on Saturday night.

Scotney, 9-0, also holds the IBF and WBO world titles and makes the first defense of her unified crown against New Zealand’s unbeaten IBO champion, Mea Motu, 20-0 (8 KOs), in Nottingham. The event is headlined by Dalton Smith’s vacant European junior welterweight title fight with Walid Ouizza and will be screened worldwide by DAZN.

The 26 year-old has crammed a lot into her nine professional outings. Rather than choosing the path of least resistance, the Londoner has been fighting at championship level since just her fourth fight.

In June 2023 she won the IBF world title with a unanimous decision victory over Australia’s Cherneka Johnson and, last April, she was crowned Ring Magazine champion after outpointing France’s WBO champion, Segolene Lefebvre, to unify the 122lb division.

In an ideal world, Scotney would like to have taken another step towards becoming the undisputed champion at 122lbs by plunging directly into another unification fight but at Thursday’s press conference, she insisted that taking a detour from that plan to honor a mandatory challenger hasn’t affected her approach or level of motivation at all.

“It doesn’t. I feel like your mindset's the same whether you've had your debut or you're sitting there as a unified world champion. Every fight matters and every fight's a world title because without that fight, the next one's not there and the world titles aren’t,” she said.

“My mindset from a kid until now, it's never changed and that'll be the plan. I’ve got to do the business on Saturday night and I will.

“I feel like holding The Ring belt cements you as number one and, Saturday night, I'll be going out and showing everyone exactly why I am the number one in the 122lb division.”

Motu - who’s IBO crown won’t be on the line on Saturday - is a long way from home but has spoken with the confidence of an unbeaten fighter. throughout the build-up.

In a strange coincidence, the fighters both turned professional within hours of each other on October 17th 2020 but whilst Scotney has been matched hard and manoeuvred through the levels, the 35 year-old has been extremely busy, albeit at a much lower level.

Motu is fully aware of the scale of the challenge she faces but is attacking the opportunity head on. She has promised to “destroy” Scotney and is relishing the prospect of accomplishing her dreams.

“I've just worked really hard and trained really hard, like we all do, and we do a lot of sacrificing,” she said.

“So it's just the passion and the drive that I have in my inner being and it just naturally comes out when I'm asked the question.

“I just love boxing. It's basically paved my way of giving me confidence in everyday life

“I know she's a dangerous fighter. She's the best. It's always been my number one goal to fight the best and I finally made it. I'm fighting the best fighter in the world and that's always been the number one goal.

“I've always said to myself, since I started boxing, ‘I want to fight the best to be the best’ and it just naturally came in me that I'm determined. We’re all fighters. We're just determined to destroy it in the ring.”

Although Scotney has seen Motu’s threats, she prefers to let her fists do the talking and is determined to answer her properly in the ring.

“I feel like we've all seen the interview yesterday and I feel like her character's very much how she fights. She's very angry, very aggressive, very in your face, but, you know, I feel like that will only bring out the best in me and I'm very much looking forward to showing everyone on Saturday night,” she said.

“We're sitting here and we've gone to back and forth. She had that interview and she said, ‘I’ll destroy you’ but we had the face off and I didn’t feel the same energy back.

“All that matters is what we do on Saturday night. The talking's irrelevant. All this is irrelevant. All that matters is fighting and on Saturday night, we'll find out.”