At last some good news. A capacity 20,000 live gate at the O2 Arena and more than two million watching on television, a record audience for women’s boxing anywhere in the world and for a female sporting event on Sky.
No one failed a drug test and the show brought together the best in class for two exceptional world title fights. Balm you might say for boxing’s battered reputation following the blowout of Chris Eubank Jr versus Conor Benn, courtesy of the latter’s positive sample, and the collapse of the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fiction.
Women’s boxing met the ultimate test with the super featherweight unification bout between Mikaela Mayer and Alycia Baumgardner and the congress at middleweight of American totem Claressa Shields and the only woman to have beaten her, albeit as an amateur, Savannah Marshall.
In both contests the women knocked gender out of the ring. There was no sense the audience was watching female combat. It was just combat, pure and simple.
This threshold has been crossed before by, among others, Irish warrior Katie Taylor, but not in the context of an all-female card that also included thoroughbred Olympians like Lauren Price, Karriss Artingstall and Caroline Dubois.
Moreover the number of women in the arena was estimated at 35 per cent, treble the usual distribution, a feature that feminised an atmosphere ordinarily replete noxious, fuelled-up masculinity.
The success of the show has cemented a view that had already taken hold among the Sky hierarchy, that women’s boxing is another rich female seam to mine alongside football, cricket and rugby. Indeed, head of boxing development Adam Smith foresees the day when the women are not only headlining their own pay-per-view mega-shows from London to Las Vegas but earning as much as the men.
“We’ve been working on this behind the scenes for a long time. We were there when Katie [Taylor] and Natasha [Jonas] had that great fight at the London Olympics in 2012. We had Savannah Marshall as a Sky Sports scholar for four years. We went through the wringer with her trying to build her back after she froze in London [2012]. We got excited when Taylor turned pro in 2016. That whole wave from London was huge and Taylor became a pioneer as a pro.
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“After the last Olympics in Tokyo we made a real push to sign the best Olympians. Lauren, Karriss and Caroline were part of that. Saturday night was a culmination of that. It was important for us to showcase the amazing women that we knew about and the trade knew about, but the audiences that we are trying to appeal to with the growth of women’s sport hadn’t. It was key not to have it on Sky Box Office so we could showcase it to a different audience.
“Parity for female boxers must come in the future – though it has to be the right fight at the right time. We are now enjoying this boom in women’s boxing, and with elite matches like we saw on Saturday and future stars developing, there is no doubt in my mind that the women’s sport will flourish and blossom immeasurably. In the arena there was a different atmosphere, a different feel, a lot of kids there. There was entertainment, the ring walks were different. And at the heart of this the fighters were keen to appear on an all-female card where they were the centre of attention, whether on the undercard or the live TV slots. A fantastic night for us and the women, a watershed moment.”
Jonas, who was an excellent pundit on Saturday, headlines on another Sky card in a unification bout next month. Before that Taylor defends her four lightweight belts at Wembley next week against Karen Carabajal.
“It was one of the great events that Sky have put on for a while,” Smith said. “A different demographic. I felt that. Young kids, boys and girls in the audience. The girls were members of amateur clubs and so excited.
“One of the things that will stick with me was Caroline Dubois. She said that when she was 11 years old one of the things that inspired her to take up boxing was London 2012. And here she was on Saturday in her fourth professional fight looking so good and emotional afterwards. She was the kid that looked up to others.
“What I saw on Saturday were young kids who will think they can achieve their dreams. This is just the beginning. Forget packing out arenas, we are talking about stadium shows. That’s how confident I am in this.”
Equality is not with us yet. The pool of opponents of comparable quality is some way off the men’s game. But the developmental arc is exploding. Estimates suggest women make up a third of all boxers. As our female footballers proved at the Euros, the world is ready for something different. Women have long understood they are better at most things than men. It seems the penny has finally dropped at fight club.
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