Former world champion Daniella Smith with her belt, in 2012. Photo / Andrew Cornaga / Photosport
Aiden McLaughlin for LockerRoom
When ‘Diamond’ Daniella Smith met legendary boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard, she had one question for him; how could she become a world champion?
“Make boxing your life,” was his response.
Smith went all in and by doing that, became the first Māori and New Zealand woman to win a world title, holding the IBF World Welterweight title between 2010 and 2011. When she won that title, she was 38.
By the time she reached the top of her sport, Smith had lived a life which had taken many turns — and it’s taken plenty more since.
Absolute dedication was what Sugar Ray Leonard was pointing at and it’s an attitude Smith takes to every part of her life.
Smith wasn’t born in Northland as is widely assumed, but was actually born in Manchester, England, in 1972 and is of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahungunu descent. Before long however, parents George and Beryl returned to New Zealand and settled in Kaikohe, north of Whangārei.
With one sister and three brothers, sport was a big part of Smith’s life growing up and it was basketball where she initially excelled, playing in the North Harbour U20 basketball team when she was only 14 and making several New Zealand age group teams.
But after moving to Auckland in her early 20s, it would be boxing that Smith would embrace.
By the time she was 22, Smith had two children, Jordan and Talia, to two different fathers. She’d moved to Sydney where her parents were now living, and was in a relationship, but that wasn’t working, so with Talia nearly two and Jordan five, Smith made the decision to move to Auckland.
Although she didn’t know many people when she arrived, her brother Taal was playing softball there and Daniella was welcomed into the softball friendship group. It contained Katrina Sloane, who became her best friend and remains so to this day.
When Smith was 26, Sloane suggested that they go to the Maritime gym on Anzac Avenue, central Auckland, and give boxing a go.
“I didn’t know anything about the sport. I knew about Muhammad Ali, Christy Martin and David Tua, and that’s it. I was always good at sport and very confident in any sort of training environment, so I walked in there just so confident and walked up to the speedball and started banging away on it. It got people’s attention because girls weren’t able to just walk into gyms and do that sort of stuff back then,” Smith says.
Within a couple of minutes, someone was strapping her hands and giving her a session on the pads.
“I was quite natural with being able to throw punches,” Smith says.
Before you knew it, Smith started going to the gym four or five times a week.
“It became my life. I trained hard every day and on the days I didn’t train in the gym, I swam in the pool.”
Later that year, Kevin Barry, trainer to David Tua and later Joseph Parker, invited Smith and two other women from the Maritime to spar at his gym. He promoted Smith’s first fight against top kickboxer Sophie Lee Andrews from Rotorua in October 1998 at the Downtown Convention Centre in Auckland.
Smith, by now juggling motherhood, a part-time job, as well as her study for a sports science degree, went on to win multiple New Zealand amateur championships in various weight divisions, representing her country at the 2002 World Championships in Turkey, on the way to a 34 win, 6 loss career as an amateur.
Smith decided to turn professional in 2005 and made her pro debut on the undercard of David Tua’s comeback fight at Waitakere’s Trusts Stadium in March, against Sue Glassey, who had a world kickboxing title and a national pro boxing title. Daniella won all four rounds by a unanimous decision and her path to a world title had started. But it would be a couple of years before a missing piece of the jigsaw was filled.
In 2007, Smith was offered a fight with South African Sandra Almeida and Monty Betham was on the card. Smith and Betham became training partners before he became her trainer. By her own admission, Betham showed Smith what hard training was and she never wanted to let him down.
After winning two national professional titles and beating world-ranked international opponents, she was invited to fight for the IBF World Championship in Berlin.
But there was a problem.
Betham couldn’t go with her, due to prior commitments. Instead, he trained her until she left New Zealand and during the fight she had two Hungarians in her corner and her Dad, George, passing notes to them.
On November 12, 2010, history was made. Smith won an evenly fought 10-round unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Jennifer Retzke, of Berlin, for the vacant IBF Welterweight title. Smith knocked her down in the eighth round. She had reached the pinnacle of her sport. But almost immediately, everything changed.
“I hated it. I wished I’d lost,” Smith says.
“From very early on in my pro career, I was very determined to become a world champion. The seed was planted back in my amateur days and that belief became really, really strong that it could happen. So, my whole life became about achieving this one goal.
“When I got to Germany, it was an absolute dream come true. I got in the ring, fought the fight of my life and I knew I’d won the fight by the end of it. In the ring it was great. I was happy, I was celebrating with everyone. I got out [of the ring], I had to be drug tested and then we sat and had this meal, and then I just started feeling like I wanted to be left alone,” Smith says.
In May that year, her younger brother Allon had taken his own life. After Allon died, she trained hard, she didn’t want to face the saddest moment of her life to escape. But then, after winning the title, reality hit home.
“The realisation that he wasn’t there hit me really hard.”
When she got back to Auckland airport, she didn’t even want to come through arrivals. But then, she was greeted by a haka, people with signs, and did lots of interviews. At the time, she didn’t want a fuss, but 14 years later, she’s grateful to everyone who turned up that day. It was years before she actually enjoyed her success, when the emotional impacts died down.
With everything that was going on, when she should have felt invincible, Smith lost her passion for boxing almost immediately.
Her first world title defence would be the following June against South African Noni Tenge in Johannesburg. Again, Betham was unable to go and this time, she went alone. Smith felt she deserved to be alone. Almost predictably, for the first time in her career, she was knocked out, in the fourth round. The championship belt would stay in South Africa.
Rather than come home sad and depressed, Smith realised she needed a new challenge. She’d got herself into incredible shape since she’d started boxing, so she decided to do a body sculpting competition. It meant needing to drop 10kgs in eight weeks. It was hard, but for Smith, it wasn’t as hard as boxing; the hardest thing about this competition was wearing high heel shoes. She finished fourth and then, in typical Smith style, went and ate pizza and had a few drinks.
Smith returned to boxing professionally, but it was never the same, and after a few defeats, she retired in 2015, 17 years after that first amateur fight.
“I probably boxed a couple of years too long, but I didn’t know how to stop being a boxer,” Smith says.
As the years had passed, Smith had become a co-owner of Boxing Alley in Parnell. She ran the gym and took personal training sessions, making good use of her sports science degree and her boxing ability. But again, the time had come for a change.
“I sold my shares in Boxing Alley and set up my own gym called Diamonds Boxing and then my own events, Diamonds in the Ring,”
These initiatives encouraged a new generation of women boxers, including Maria Motu, who went on to be IBO World Super Bantamweight champion in 2023, her sister Sally Motu as well as Daniella’s daughter Talia Smith. Their charity events raised thousands of dollars for women’s refuge.
With the background of Covid in 2020, Smith decided she’d had enough of Auckland and moved back up north to Kaikohe. Her parents also needed more support although sadly her mother Beryl died in 2023.
Smith is now a grandmother twice over, with daughter Talia having had daughter Anaya, three, and son Jordan living in Brisbane with his sone Lakoda, also three.
After returning to Kaikohe, Smith became a programme facilitator for the Department of Corrections, delivering rehabilitation initiatives in prisons and the community.
“I enjoy working with our people, it’s a passion,” Smith says.
In early 2023, she received news which took her back to those boxing days. For five years, New Zealand boxing writer Benjamin Watt had been nominating Smith to be inducted into the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame without success. But suddenly that changed.
“It was weird, because I’ve moved back up here [to Kaikohe] and almost forgotten about my life as a boxer, so when I got a phone call to say I was being inducted into the hall of fame, it took me by surprise, and then, I don’t know why, but I started crying, it was a special moment,” Smith says.
“It was a very humbling experience. It was really lovely to be a part of an event that celebrated women’s boxing, the past, and also looking towards the future and where the sport’s heading. It was also nice to be acknowledged.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.
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