Don’t be fooled – our fight is not won yet
Women boxers headlining in New York is great, but it is not enough, Jane Couch tells Gareth A Davies
‘Nothing new.” That is how women’s boxing pioneer Jane Couch surveys talk of what is being described as a landmark moment in the growth of women’s boxing, as Irish star Katie Taylor and multi-weight world champion Amanda Serrano make history in New York this weekend.
It will be the first time two women have headlined at Madison Square Garden in 140 years of the iconic sports venue, and it will also be a pay-per-view event.
“Yeah, sure Taylor-serrano is massive,” agrees Couch, the five-time world champion, now 53, who won a landmark case for women to be allowed to fight in 1998. Couch had been refused a licence to box by the British Boxing Board of Control in the Nineties and went to court to change the course of sporting history.
“I’m dead happy for them all, but there’s still a hell of a long way to go,” she says. Couch argues that Savannah Marshall v Claressa Shields’s middleweight unification bout this summer in the UK will be an even bigger event, but laments that the sport remains so male dominated.
“There are so many girls out
‘I’m dead happy for them all, but there’s still a hell of a long way to go. The Boxing Board of Control is still very anti-women’
there now that are fighting, trying to train, trying to hold down day jobs, who don’t have any sponsors, and as I say, there’s still a hell of a long way to go for the girls,” she says. “You are seeing only the few successful ones on Sky or DAZN. But there is still so much to do to put women’s boxing on anything like an even keel with men’s boxing.”
As an example, Couch highlights the lack of representation and progress behind the scenes as indicative of deeper problems hampering equality in the sport.
“I think the organisation of it all needs to change,” she says. “I think the Boxing Board of Control is still very anti-women, it hasn’t got any women on its board, it has got one woman referee as a token gesture, it hasn’t got any women judges, women time-keepers. It’s still a very male-dominated sport. All these things need to change.”
Robert Smith, secretary of the Boxing Board, disagrees with Couch and insists change is coming. “Nothing happens overnight,” Smith tells TWS. “But we are very open to anybody on the board who can give the right contribution. Obviously women’s boxing is relatively new, so it could take a little bit of time. Hannah Rankin [the former world champion], for example, would be a fantastic person to come on to the board, if she wants to do so when she stops boxing. But ultimately, female boxing has increased massively since there was women’s boxing in the Olympic Games in London in 2012, and we are pleased with how it is moving. We have women doctors, women in our area councils, and we are looking to grow the women’s perspective in the sport.”
Globally, there are four main sanctioning bodies. The president of one of those, Mauricio Sulaiman of the World Boxing Council and one of the sport’s true innovators, concurs with Couch. “It has been a long, difficult road for women’s boxing, and we have been there from day one. We have had three women’s boxing conventions and we have lobbied for them with promoters, with TV networks, with everyone. We have to get behind them. And now it’s a big stage with Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano.
“For example, you have [female] Mexican fighters being the main event on television every two or three weeks in my country,” Sulaiman, who lives in Mexico City, says. “There is so much talent, so much power in women and I’m sure it is there. We have a good number of judges and executives now, but we need more.
“The real power behind the promotions are women, and believe me, so much is being done behind the scenes and it is a matter of bringing that to the fore and getting women the due respect and recognition.”
Couch, whose UK debut in Caesars nightclub in Streatham against Simona Lukic was covered by The Telegraph in November 1998, is to have her life depicted in a drama series by Suranne Jones, the star of HBO and BBC drama Gentleman Jack, who bought Couch’s memoir The Final Round. Couch boxed all over the world at a time when it was still illegal for women in the UK.
“After all the struggles I went through in my career, the fights in the ring, with the media, and in the courts, my story will be seen by a new audience,” Couch says. “Women’s boxing has come a long way but this is just the start. With Serrano and Taylor being the first women to headline at MSG, and it’s pay-per-view – all that’s brilliant, brilliant for the sport – but I’m not really amazed because there have always been great women boxers.”
Couch cites some of boxing’s luminaries fighting in America – from Mia St John and Christy Martin, to Lucia Rijker and Ann Wolfe. “It was only a matter of time for the sport to take off. I boxed in America on the same bill as Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr, Naseem Hamed, and you could see what was coming. The UK was way behind,” she says.
“I remember going to a Regina Halmich fight in Germany. It was in an arena with 22,000 people in there, it was on national TV and she was just so celebrated there as a woman. It was always going to come, it just took a younger promoter like Eddie Hearn to get it moving, because the promoters in my day, such as Frank Warren and Frank Maloney, just pushed you out and didn’t give you a chance.
“Them and the Boxing Board. Because I was a woman. My only chance was to go to America. It was only a matter of time before it came here. I don’t feel any resentment whatsoever. That’s what I fought for and now it has happened.”