This is Progress Hardly..More like….Two Steps Forward, Three steps back! by Sue TL Fox / Brian Ackley

In this season of giving thanks, there is one troubling trend that is getting a “no thanks” from me and many fans of women’s boxing–Mismatches!

The most flagrant setback for the sport came across the Atlantic one day before Thanksgiving, and it redefined the word “turkey.” Jane Couch, who has been involved in some very entertaining and competitive bouts, and who worked so diligently out of the ring to finally and deservedly earn the right to box in her native England, humiliated her novice 18-year-old opponent in barely more than a round.

If you wonder how it was received: Don’t. “In terms of entertainment value,” writes David Smith in the London Evening News, “the crowd would have been better rewarded had two women stepped in the glare of spotlights armed with ironing boards and then raced each other to turn baskets full of washing into neat, folded piles.” Smith went on to say, “Simple logic dictates that once the novelty has worn off—if it hasn’t already done so—it will be years before women’s professional boxing is a viable box-office draw in this country.”

Smith peppered his story like a good fighter uses his jab—except his words were more like straight-hard rights to the chin—with such descriptions as “non-event”, “dire” “unfortunate” and his “biting” observation that, “It was perfectly obvious last night that women’s professional boxing doesn’t work and never will in this country…”

When reading some of the reviews of this fight, it was as if I was reading some of the press clippings of not only about myself, but of other women boxers in the 1970s. It even brought  to mind a similar “historical first” that took place in North Carolina in 1978 with  Cat Davis, a World lightweight champion.  Like Couch, there was tremendous media hype before the bout, and like the recent display in England, it was a debacle. The :”fight” lasted 154 seconds with Davis knocking out her opponent, Margie Dunson. Not only was the public disappointed about the mismatch, but the news media had a hay day with the lopsided turn of events.

I know that there are still problems in finding enough quality opponents to go around – I mean, it is truly sad and a bit bizarre when good, up-and-coming fighters have to make a plea on the Internet to simply find an opponent to fill a date.

And yet, one of the more serious problems seems to be with the managers and promoters who somehow fear killing the “goose” that laid the golden glove by refusing to sign and promote matchups of top-ranked fighters. The real problem with that reasoning is: there is no “goose.” Unless your first name is Christy or Lucia, there are barely any female fighters out there making a living in the sport.  In fact some are still fighting for the same amount of money that I was paid 20 years ago!

Women’s boxing can only grow when all parties concerned understand that quality, entertaining and competitive bouts are what the public wants, and ultimately, will be willing to support. For every good recent matchup – Kathy Williams against Yvonne Trevino, Leah Mellinger against Kathy Collins, Eva Jones-Young against Para Draine, and Deb Nichols against Chris Kruez – there have been twice as many bombs.

Every mismatch is just one more blow–a far harder blow than any woman boxer could ever deliver in the ring. Collectively, they will become blows that will cripple any chance of our sport being accepted on a more positive and universal level. But, on the women’s side of the sport, they become easy and effective ammunition for every critic out there.

Said Britain boxing promoter Frank Maloney recently, “Women should stay in the kitchen, or in the bedroom.” In a post fight commentary after Couch’s fiasco, Ian Gibbs, from the Daily Mail said, “The grotesque spectacle paraded as a breakthrough in boxing, the first women’s professional fight in the UK, should be consigned to history and the record book slammed shut for good.”

Jane Couch said thanks for the license.  The public, however, rightfully said “no thanks” to another in a string of needless mismatches that our sport can no longer afford.