MONTREAL — It’s the hours before Kim Clavel’s IBF mini flyweight title fight against Sol Cudos, and the crowd has filled the Theatre Saint Denis in her hometown. Team Clavel T-shirts and Fleur De Lis flags are the dress code it seemed. It’s one of the rare places on Earth where a fight that isn’t, say, Canelo vs. Crawford, is universally featured in the local newspapers, newscasts and the French-Canadian version of SportsCenter.

The focus of the entire city is on Clavel, yet her thoughts still travel back to her farm.

Earlier this year, she and her boyfriend set up a camera in their barn so she could open an app on her phone and check on her horses and cows. She can check in while she’s in training camp, or in between camps when she’s at the school working with children with learning disabilities. Or, in the locker room before her fight.

The reason the stands are full on this night is because the fans care about her, but also because she cares about them. As ferocious as she can be in the ring, she is compassionate and empathetic outside of it. In 2020, when the world needed it the most, Clavel stepped up to be a frontline nurse in long-term care facilities at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, earning her the Pat Tillman Award at the ESPYs. As time went on and she stepped away from nursing, she felt the pull towards helping animals and schoolchildren instead.

“I remember my first two years as a nurse, I didn't have a stable job, I was part-time. You do stuff that people don't like to do when you start. The week I started, I was working in palliative care and with newborns in the hospital. In the same week I was with a new baby and then someone during their last breaths. That made me so much more mature. It gave me perspective on life," Clavel said. "You don't control when you're born and you don't control your last days. I want to be in control of my life, I want to be happy. I'm so happy to be good enough at a sport that I can live from it. I enjoy my life right now, I love the people I have around. I love animals, I love to help people when I can. I love to be who I am, because we never know.”

Clavel’s journey to becoming champion the first time, winning the WBC light flyweight title in a battle with Yesenia Gomez in 2022, was either obscured or complicated by the disease she helped fight. Her crucial ranking-building efforts were staged in empty venues outside of her home province of Quebec, or in partially empty, socially distanced venues inside of it.

While Clavel was rightfully heralded as a hero outside of the ring, her hero’s journey inside of it could never really be celebrated. In another cruel twist, while preparing for her first defense of that title against Yesica Nery Plata, Clavel caught a flu that seemed symptomatically similar to that one, rendering her in bed for 16 hours a day at one point with her coaches Danielle Bouchard and Stephane Larouche at her side monitoring her condition. After a four-week delay of the bout, she lost a tremendous action fight, and the clip of a teary-eyed Clavel aired across the country.

"I wanted to be victorious and go have a beer, but I'm going to go home and put myself on ice instead. I fought with my heart and my guts, but maybe a little too much. I know that I am capable of better,” she said with Bouchard’s hand on her shoulder.

It felt as though that could have been the end of Clavel’s tale, a consideration she even had herself, that the synopsis of her career would be that she was her country’s only women’s world champion at a time when her selflessness cost her personal glory. A cold dish that sounds nice on the menu, but tastes bittersweet.

But Clavel rebuilt, even after a subsequent loss in a unified title fight against Evelyn Bermudez, winning four fights in a row at Montreal Casino. In August 2025, Jake Paul and Nikisa Bidarian’s Most Valuable Promotions took notice, and added Clavel to their roster of elite women’s talent.

On September 27, Clavel received the celebration she was never quite able to enjoy previously, headlining at a venue that more than 100 years earlier, Jack Johnson had fought in, ushering the sport back into a theatre that hadn’t seen it since 1961.

“When I walk to the ring, I have a big smile on my face. It's not because I'm not serious, it's because I'm happy to do this. I worked so hard for this, and I'm going to enjoy every moment of it,” she said.

Clavel’s pearly smile was on display during her ring walk, and quite often, in between rounds, even as blood poured down her face at times. Just as she’s able to do outside of the ring, Clavel finds joy and fulfillment in the things many people would try to avoid, or would be too afraid to encounter. In Cudos, she found an opponent willing to match her punch for punch, one so persistent that she compelled her to fight on the inside for long stretches of the fight.

As has been the case in Clavel’s best moments in her career, she heeded the advice of Bouchard and stepped back long enough with her eyes high enough in each round to earn the nod from judges in nearly all of them. The scores of 99-91 twice and 98-92 in favor of Clavel couldn’t quite illustrate the war she had to endure to not just the fight, but each round. Clavel landed 125 of 523 total punches while Cudos landed 111 of 599, with the two landing within five punches of one another in nine of the 10 rounds according to CompuBox.

When Clavel’s name was announced the winner, the jam-packed audience of more than 1,800 erupted in Quebecois pride, as she became the first fighter from the province to win a world title in a second weight class.

“When I look back on my journey, I was extremely naive, I knew nothing. I didn't think I would get to where I am today, but I dreamt about it. Today, I no longer have to dream. I am fulfilled. I know I don't have a perfect journey, but I always go back to work and start again,” said Clavel following the bout.

“It’s been a long time since I experienced a beautiful feeling like this. I have the right to be on cloud nine, and I'm going to stay on cloud nine for a long time. I'm going to enjoy the moment. It's something we don't do often enough."