Why the London Olympics inspired me to start fighting in the boxing ring

On a recent Friday night I find myself in a corner of London's oldest boxing venue staring at hundreds of people about to watch me fight. I hardly recognise the woman nervously waiting for the fight to begin; my shoulder muscles flicker when I move and my triceps poke threateningly out of my upper arms. I have long been a fitness fanatic but my body (and mind) has been transformed by two months of intense training for a public "white collar" fight.

It seems a long time since the London 2012 Olympics but that's where it started for me. The first Games to include women's boxing as an official sport (100 years after it appeared as a demonstration bout), it was also the first to showcase boxers such as Nicola Adams and her gold-winning performance for Team GB.

There are signs that other women have been similarly inspired. It's hard to say how many have taken the plunge into a public fight, but boxing training as a whole (which includes non-contact varieties of the sport, purely for fitness purposes) has grown in popularity. Results from a Sport England – Active People, survey on 6 December 2012 show that 23,000 participated in boxing training at least once per week, up from 17,100 in March 2011.

It may be too early for evidence of a post-Olympics fillip, but there appears to have been a noticeable shift in spectator attitudes towards female combat sports. There are, of course, some who remain unashamedly anti-boxing, objecting to what they see as a brutal sport that causes brain damage regardless of any protection worn. There are those, too, who object, not to boxing in general but to female boxing; it's just not right for women to hit and want to hurt each other, they seem to think. What about their pretty faces? Doesn't all that hair get in the way? It's fine for girls to hit pads and bags in an effort to get fitter, stronger, leaner … But to hit someone else with the intention to cause pain or damage? The implication is that it's just downright unfeminine. Now it seems that Adams's win has forced such ideas underground; it no longer seems acceptable to doubt that women are just as able as men to engage in such a primarily aggressive sport.

As the second British woman ever to turn professional, Cathy Brown understands the battle that female fighters face. "When I started out, there weren't enough British female boxers – my opponents had to be shipped over from Europe. Persuading UK promoters to allow me on their show (some still refused outright to put a female fight on) meant selling enough tickets to pay for my opponent's and their trainer's airfare, accommodation and expenses and still be able to hand over a profit to the promoter. In order to raise my profile, I had to work a lot with the press, including doing sexy half-naked shots in newspapers."

As European flyweight champion and the first woman to win an English title, Brown, once ranked number three in the world, was clearly exceptional. Yet she faced discrimination. "Even though my skill set was as high as the men and I regularly appeared in the media, I never got sponsorship, nor a fraction of their earnings. The US and rest of Europe showed female boxers financial support, but companies here were scared to put their name to a female boxer in case it looked bad. It was a constant battle – the trainers never focused on me as they did their male fighters and I constantly had to push to get time with them."

At London's York Hall, female boxing is on the rise, with four of the 16 bouts in the recent London Calling event involving women. Dominic Shepherd, the show's promoter, says: "In the 10 years I've promoted White Collar Boxing, I've only ever featured two female bouts, so to have eight ladies on this show proves that there is a big increase in women's boxing. I think it's definitely down to the London Olympics where, in my opinion, the women outshone the men."

My fight consists of three two-minute rounds in a "no contest" fight; Shepherd hopes that because they don't declare a winner or loser, people will enjoy the sport for the physical game of chess it is, rather than seek a knockout punch. The implication is that boxing doesn't have to be about blood and victory.

Nevertheless, the din is deafening as I deliver flurries of punches. My opponent counters my hook with a straight right to my nose. It hurts, but nothing like it would without the adrenaline. There are probably about half as many women as men watching and no one seems to mind the woman wearing high heels and a see-through dress whose sole purpose is to hold up a board indicating which round is coming up.

My own fight is over in the blink of an eye, but for many women coming into the sport at a grassroots level it may have just begun.

For more information, visit The Amateur Boxing Association of England

By Lucy Fry

Source: www.guardian.co.uk