TOKYO — The wait is finally over for Lynn’s Rashida Ellis.
After years of training and then months of waiting, the Lynn native and former national champion boxer will make her Olympic debut for Team USA on Thursday night with a Lightweight Division (132 lbs./60 kg) Round of 16 bout against Great Britain’s Caroline Dubois.
Ellis, 25, will square up against a very worthy opponent in the 20-year-old Dubois. A London native, Dubois took home the gold medal at both the 2018 World Youth Championships and the 2018 Youth Olympic Games. She’s also already won a fight at this year’s Olympic Games, defeating Kosovo’s Donjeta Sadiku by unanimous decision in the Round of 32 on Tuesday.
Ellis has not had an Olympic fight yet after coming into the competition ranked as one of the top boxers in the world.
Ellis, who trains at Private Jewels Fitness in Lynn, won bronze at both the 2019 Elite Women’s World Championships and the 2019 Pan American Games, adding to her Boxing Task Force (BTF) rankings to solidify her position in Tokyo as the second highest-ranked American boxer and 12th overall in her weight class. Ellis will be looking to win Team USA’s first women’s lightweight Olympic medal.
But Ellis’ list of accomplishments is much longer than that. An Elite National Championship winner as a high schooler in 2013, Ellis went on to win the National Golden Gloves in 2016 and then another Elite National Championship in 2018. She went on to finish first in the US Olympic Team Trials in 2020 before the pandemic postponed the Games for a full year. Ellis also took home a gold medal at the 2021 Boxam International Tournament and a bronze medal at the 2020 Boxam International Tournament.
Ellis and Dubois will touch gloves at 10:30 p.m. Thursday, and the fight can be streamed live at https://www.nbcolympics.com/schedule/sport/boxing.