Watch Anna Woolhouse leading a TV broadcast of a boxing show, darts, or any sport she has fronted over the last 12 years, and you will rightly feel she has it all figured out – such is her professionalism and experience. Still, it’s an intense job and, at times, a surreal one.
So, as Woolhouse speaks to The Independent over Zoom, sporting her trademark, large-lens glasses and tucking herself up on her home-office chair, she’s prepared to delve into the psychology of a presenter.
As we chat, we go through the camera lens, through the glasses lens, and look at a unique career – which has taken her from Sky to DAZN, from ice hockey to rugby league to darts and boxing, the latter of which is currently her main focus.
“For some of the bigger pay-per-views, if I actually sat and thought about how many people were watching, I probably wouldn’t go on air,” she says. “You just feel like you’re talking to one camera and people’s living rooms. When you first start out, there are definite ‘God, I’m going to be sick’ nerves. But I guess over the years, you use that to find a kind of fun.”
In general, the 42-year-old has found that nerves have given way to excitement over time. A lot of elite athletes and performers will tell you that we often mistake anxiety for excitement, anyway.
“I’ve always said: if you don’t have any kind of feeling there, or that kind of nervous excitement goes, maybe it’s time to stop doing it,” Woolhouse says. “Live TV is pretty terrifying at times, but in particular with boxing, it’s that element of ‘anything can happen’. Fights can go long or short; I’ve had some almighty fills of like an hour, when two ambulances have had to go, and they’re basically like: ‘Can’t have any action in the ring.’
“But in those moments, I sort of describe myself a bit like a swan,” Woolhouse explains. “The more chaos going around, I just find a sense of calm. You’re paddling underneath, but on top you’re kind of like: ‘Okay, let’s ride with it.’
”More so than any sport I cover, boxing has so many different elements. It’s inherently super loud in the arena or stadium, you’ve got to be able to hear the guests, the director and five other people talking in your ear at the same time, and be very flexible. It’s not like football, which has 45 minutes and then a break and then the second half; boxing is much more free-flowing.
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“Anything can happen, sadly, and you obviously pray it doesn’t. But say a fighter’s down for too long or getting oxygen, your priority is making sure that they’re okay. It’s not about making a spectacle around the fight. It’s finding the balance: you want it to be an entertaining show, but it’s a serious sport.”
These are lessons that Woolhouse has learned over more than a decade, but no matter how much one learns, you can still get swept up in a “whirlwind”; that’s how the Lincolnshire native describes her recent trip to the pyramids of Giza, where Oleksandr Usyk boxed Rico Verhoeven on DAZN, and it sums up her first few months in one role at Sky, which took in Anthony Joshua vs Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye vs Tony Bellew.
“I look back [at those months in 2017] and think, ‘How the hell did I manage that?’” she laughs. Of Egypt, she says: “I landed at 4am on Saturday, went into the show, finished at 3am, then literally went straight to the airport. The backdrop was absolutely insane. I haven’t watched it back on TV, but apparently it looked amazing.”
Woolhouse’s recent addition to the DAZN team was accompanied by the introduction of three other female presenters: Ariana Bravo, Olivia Wayne and Jolie Sharpe. In a way, this move mirrors the significant growth of women’s boxing itself in recent years – something Woolhouse has watched with great pride.
open image in gallery“When I first started, it was quite new for a female to be fronting boxing,” she says. “I’ve always done my work, but I just made sure I doubly did my work, because I knew there might be some element of judgement. Even 10 years on, I thoroughly research every fight and make sure I know my stuff, but I did feel a bit of a pressure back then to really know my stuff inside out and backwards. But I think it settled down pretty quickly.
“I have chatted to a couple of the girls that are a bit newer to boxing. I just said, ‘Always sit ringside, don’t be afraid to ask questions.’ Even now, if I’m sat with [former world champion] Carl Frampton, I don’t assume I know the answers; I’ve not been in the ring, so I will still ask.”
Still asking, still learning. Yet with all that Woolhouse has achieved and experienced, it’s hard to imagine what’s left that could excite her. Despite her decade-plus on screen, however, it seems she’s just getting started.
”Obviously AJ vs [Tyson] Fury, I’d love to be involved in that,” she says, “but I’d love to do some London Marathon stuff and get involved with wider sports bits, because I was meant to run the marathon this year, but then I stupidly broke my foot. It’s alright, it’s my own fault.” She laughs again. “I broke it getting into bed.”
It’s not quite the usual adage, but as Woolhouse prepares for her next broadcast, “break a foot” will do.