Glove2Face

Women’s boxing has come a long way in the past few years as far as visibility and demand, but still have a long way to go to get to the level of their male counterparts. This conversation has been going on for years, mostly among the females of boxing, and their fans, but why is their version of the sport coming up short on exposure, respect, and financing. If they train just as hard, and put it all on the line in the ring just like the men, why shouldn’t they get everything they get?

To answer this in short, it weighs heavily on the demand, and there really has never been a large amount of people, at least with a voice, that have pushed their agenda. If people don’t ask to see these fights, it translates into they aren’t interested in neither watching nor paying for it, which is a bad investment from the start. You have male fights that flop all the time, but their fights in general are asked for so a calculated risk can be taken.

I remember interviewing the current UBF World female middleweight champion Tori Nelson maybe four to five years ago, and one of the topics we discussed was about female boxing which opened my eyes a little bit. We had a great interview, and during the call she expressed her concern on how female boxers were getting the short end of the stick, but when I asked her about watching the sport herself, she said she didn’t really watch it… This was the first time I heard this type of response, but it wasn’t the last, so I asked myself, since I have been an advocate to help female boxing come to the light, if they aren’t watching, then how in the hell am I going to convince others to support it? I think one of the main reasons for the stagnation of the progress is simple; it wasn’t being supported from within.

Things have drastically changed in the past few years with the emergence of Gold medal winner (2012 and 2016) Clarissa Shields (8-0). She has become a feature of sorts, from her commercial ads to headlining a Showtime event next Saturday (04/13) against fellow undefeated Christina Hammer (24-0). This will be a huge step in the right direction, but needs to continue to entice fans and make these networks and promoters see an asset.

There is a huge opportunity that can be made if this is lucrative, because if it is, we will see more female headliners, but if the female boxers themselves don’t support it, it don’t matter how much they complain about the huge gap in-between the two, they’ll never see their dreams come to fruition, and websites like http://www.womenofboxing.com/ will eventually die-off due to lack of support!