LAS VEGAS – Mikaela Mayer held her breath until Mark Shunock announced her as the winner over Sandy Ryan six months ago.

The two-division champion’s nervousness September 27 stemmed from a pair of split-decision defeats to rival Alycia Baumgardner and Natasha Jonas. Those two losses were suffered in England, yet even fighting in the United States didn’t alleviate Mayer’s fears of the 2016 U.S. Olympian not getting credit for winning at least the six rounds she believes she won when she fought England’s Ryan.

Las Vegas’ Mayer won a majority decision over Ryan and the WBO women’s welterweight title from her. She also left The Theater at Madison Square Garden that night with more respect for Ryan than she has for Baumgardner, who became women’s boxing’s undisputed 130-pound champion when she edged Mayer on the cards in October 2022 at O2 Arena in London.

“She’s a good fighter,” Mayer told The Ring regarding Ryan. “If anything, I give her more respect because she engages. You can’t really tell if Baumgardner is a good fighter when she went up against me because there wasn’t even a lot of engagement. She was sort of on her back foot. I didn’t press the pace as much as I should have, so it wasn’t as action-packed. But Sandy is obviously a strong fighter. She’s game.”

Mayer later granted Ryan the rematch she never received from Baumgardner or Jonas. Not because Mayer felt she owed Ryan anything, but because their entertaining, competitive contest was well received by boxing fans and it made the most financial sense for the former IBF/WBO 130-pound champion.

Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) is scheduled to defend her WBO 147-pound crown against Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) in a 10-round main event ESPN will air Saturday night from Fontainebleau Las Vegas (10 p.m. ET; 7 p.m. PT).

The odds on their rematch are even according to DraftKings, though Mayer expects her enhanced strength to help her neutralize Ryan’s physicality. Mayer is confident that her trainer, former middleweight and junior middleweight contender Kofi Jantuah, has helped add muscle mass to her 5-foot-10 frame that has better equipped her to handle Ryan’s pressure than she was in their first fight.

“I think her weaknesses are her offense is her defense, not a lotta defense,” Mayer said. “So, when she meets somebody like me, who’s throwing back just as much, she gets hit. But she tries to use her body size by muscling me around. That’s definitely something I can adjust to, not letting her push me back because it doesn’t look good to the judges. And even though I was punching moving backwards, you still don’t wanna let someone muscle you, because that’s all she has.”

New York’s Waleska Roldan (97-93) and Canada’s Benoit Roussel (96-94) scored their first fight for Mayer. England’s Bob Williams scored it a draw, 95-95.

Mayer trailed by the same score, 67-66, on the cards of Roussel and Williams through seven rounds. Roldan had her ahead 67-66 entering the eighth round.

The taller Mayer won each of the last three rounds according to Roldan and Roussel. Williams scored two of the final three rounds for Mayer, who would’ve won a unanimous decision if Williams had scored the ninth round for her, as did Roldan and Roussel.

CompuBox’s final, unofficial tally was indicative of how closely contested Mayer-Ryan was. Mayer unofficially landed one more punch than Ryan, according to CompuBox (186-of-636 to 185-of-567).

“I thought I had a good game plan going into that fight,” Mayer said. “I had her down [on the cards] in the first half of the fight with my boxing and my movement. She didn’t really kick into gear and adjust until the second half of the fight. There were probably moments where I got caught up fighting on the inside, because we all know I like to do that. That’s when I gave maybe those close rounds away, when they could’ve gone either way.

“I still felt by the end of the fight that I had won clearly. I think that towards the end of the fight, when I was catching her with those uppercuts on the inside, those were pretty solid. And I felt afterward that, even if some of the middle rounds were close, I had solidified the beginning and the end of the fight. But you never know. I was a little nervous. I was excited, but we were all acting like I won, right? And I’m like, ‘Wait, Kofi, let’s just get the decision first, because I’ve been here before, and you just don’t know.’ ”

ESPN’s doubleheader Saturday night will begin with WBO welterweight champ Brian Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) in a 12-round, 147-pound title defense against Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1, 19 KOs).

Norman, of Conyers, Georgia, will make his first defense of a WBO belt he won by knocking out San Diego’s Giovani Santillan in the 10th round last May 18 at Pechanga Arena in San Diego. The 24-year-old Norman had surgery on his left hand in October, which postponed his fight with Cuevas from November 8 until Saturday night.

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing.