Most people fight for a reason. For Sofia Nabet, it was easy to find: “I wanted to make my father proud.” Former boxer Mohammed Nabet, with 50 welterweight bouts to his credit, had one regret: his Moroccan nationality had prevented him from going after the French national championship. He took his 4 daughters to the boxing ring in their home town of Chauny, in north-eastern France, secretly hoping that one would realize his ambition. Sofia—youngest of the 4—was a natural.

Now 34 and a human resources manager at SNCF Réseau, she was a fearful child: “Most people didn’t notice, but I was always scared. I didn’t even dare go out and buy bread on my own,” she says with a smile. But in her boxing gloves, she felt different: “My father coached me—I was sort of his guinea pig. We quickly realized that I had boxing in my blood,” says Sofia. “In the ring I feel confident: it came naturally.”

In her teens, Sofia honed her ring awareness and “out-boxing” style at the family gym in Northern France, with only one goal: fighting her first match. But her father curbed her urge to meet the competition, insisting that she master the art of dodging before getting into the ring, so she “wouldn’t get messed up.”

Once she had Mohammed’s blessing, Sofia headed to Soissons for her initiation. At age 15, she faced an adversary who had already fought 8 matches—and her own stage fright as dozens of spectators watched her every move. She kept her cool, and left the ring with her first victory and a new nickname: Laila Ali, after Muhammad Ali’s boxer daughter. “Because I fought with my hands down, like my father,” says Sofia with amusement.

The father-daughter team clinched every regional title in Picardy between 2006 and 2009, but their relationship began to fray as they entered the 2010s. Unwilling to quarrel with her father, Sofia left home and moved to Saint-Étienne, near Lyon, where one of her older sisters lived. Working odd jobs—as a cleaner at the morgue and later in the neonatal and paediatric oncology wards of a local hospital—Sofia pursued her dream, far from her role model. She had already won 2 more regional titles when she fell prey to a mysterious ailment.

One morning, Sofia got out of bed and followed her usual routine—but found herself unable to tie her shoelaces or walk properly. The 21-year-old gritted her teeth and powered through, attributing her difficulties to “severe lumbago”. Wracked with pain, she went to her car, but as she reached for her keys, she coughed and froze. “I heard a loud crack, and suddenly I was unable to move.” Passersby called for help, emergency workers arrived, and the boxer was lifted onto a stretcher. The nightmare had begun.

“At first they thought it was paralysis due to a herniated disc,” says Sofia, who was confined to bed at the home of her sister and brother-in-law. Because she was so young, surgery was not an option. Sedated and unable to box, Sofia fell apart and sank into depression. She found comfort in her supportive family, but felt a gnawing guilt at being unable to stay in the ring and make her father proud. “He saw me as his ‘mini-me’ and had a really hard time with my illness,” she says. Month after month went by, punctuated by physical therapy sessions and the parade of nurses who came to change Sofia’s position and help her shower and dress.

The light returned in 2014, when Sofia got back on her feet and began to walk again. Secretly, she went back to very light training at a nearby stadium. She worked alone, at a time when “nobody believed in me anymore, everyone in my sport had forgotten about me, and everyone thought I’d never box again.” But Sofia had a guiding idea: find a coach she could trust and compete in a French national championship.

She went to Bourgoin-Jallieu, south-east of Lyon, and sought out Papou Ouajif, who had coached Brahim Asloum, a gold medallist at the 2009 Olympics in Sydney in 2000, hiding her pain from the famous coach. Her technique was coming back, but her overall fitness was “a catastrophe”. Papou advised her to take out an amateur’s license. Worn down, she cited her family ambition and confided in Freddy Hugbeke, another coach at the club.

Well aware of his new protégé’s potential, Hugbeke said, “No worries. We’ll manage this.” And they did. In a comeback worthy of Rocky, Sofia fought 7 bouts and scored 7 victories. Anthony Veniant, coach for the French national boxing team, also realized Sofia “had something”. In 2016, she qualified to compete in an international tournament in Ireland, and won her first fight outside France. That season also brought her first encounter with the man who would soon become her life partner—boxer Adji Sangare, then serving as cornerman to one of her adversaries.

“Itchier than ever”, Sofia entered the 2017 season ready “to rip some heads off” at the French championships. In the ring at the Cirque d’Hiver in Le Havre, where each bout consisted of four 2-minute rounds, Sofia overpowered the competition, and the judges unanimously declared her the winner on points. Slapping her victor’s belt, she shouted, “You’re a champ, Dad!” Now the featherweight (57 kg) champion of France and a member of the French national team, Sofia had made Mohammed’s dream come true.

While training at France’s National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance (INSEP), Sofia met Bakary Diabira, a former member of the SNCF Athletes Programme. Now back at the top of her game in boxing, she wanted to balance it with her working life by joining SNCF Group, and in January 2018 became a customer care agent at Paris-Nord station. But a new bout of back pain turned training for the Tokyo Olympics into torture. “They sent me to all kinds of specialists, but my back said stop. I was vomiting at the end of my training sessions,” says Sofia. “It hit me like a sledgehammer.” With no solution in sight, she quit the French national team.

Finally her physical therapist referred her to yet another specialist, who diagnosed her—after years of pain—with disc disease. Her only option was surgery. But Sofia Nabet was no ordinary patient. Two weeks after her operation, she was walking again. Six months later, to the astonishment of her doctors, she went back to training in a back brace, with a new goal: “launch my pro career with Adji by my side.” On 13 July 2021, less than 9 months after her surgery, she won her first pro fight in Fontenay-sous-Bois, just east of Paris, with her father watching. Now nicknamed “The Phoenix”, she relaunched her career, winning the French pro boxing championship in April 2022 at the end of an 8-round fight.

From the boxing club in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north-east of Paris, Sofia is now pursuing her professional career with Adji. Now a human resources manager at SNCF Réseau headquarters, “to show what I can do, in the ring and beyond,” she continues to excel in boxing. In December 2023, for example, she won her 5th professional bout, taking the WBC Francophone lightweight champion title after 10 hard-fought rounds. Having rebuilt her career from scratch, Sofia is now aiming for European titles. She’s taking it one day at a time, keenly aware of her fragile back, but confident in the strength that enabled a fearful child to overcome every obstacle life threw her way.