Fleetwood Assassin defeats boxing bosses

ONE MIGHT have expected a more theatrical entrance - perhaps a large, evil-looking minder walking in front, a shiny golden dressing gown, or may be the theme tune from Rocky.

None of it. Instead Jane Couch - the self-styled Fleetwood Assassin - bounced into the room with her solicitor, ringlets swept back and wearing a tight sports top showing off her flat stomach and Mickey Mouse tattoo.

"Hiya! You all right? It's my birthday. You can sing me happy birthday," she rattled, hermouth as quick as her fists.

Britain's only professional woman boxer had reason to be pleased yesterday as she announced she had received pounds 15,000 in a settlement from the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) after winning a claim for sexual discrimination.

Ms Couch, 30, the world welterweight champion, had taken the case to tribunal earlier this year after she was refused a licence to box professionally in Britain. That licence was finally granted in June.

Yesterday at a press conference at the London offices of her solicitor she revealed the board had also undertaken to implement a full equal opportunities policy.

"I am well-chuffed. It's a nice birthday present," she said. "In the future if any woman decides to take up boxing there will not be a stigma attached to the girls." Ms Couch, who worked in a Blackpool rock factory and at a scrapyard before taking up boxing, added: "People have been coming up to me in the street, even old ladies, and saying, `Well done!' to me since I won the tribunal.

"In a few years time young girls will be able to go to their mums and say they want to be a boxer, and they will be able to do it. And I don't think there's anything wrong in that because it's not a bad thing for a girl to be able to look after herself."

Ms Couch said she was planning her first professional fight in Britain for some time in September. Then she has to defend her world title in America on 30 October.

Her solicitor, Sara Leslie, said: "We hope this will finally destroy the myth that there are medical reasons why women should not partake in boxing ... any more than men."

The BBBC had objected to licensing women on the grounds that they faced different injuries to male boxers. Some suggested women boxers being punched in the chest were at higher risk from breast cancer.

Yesterday the BBBC's general secretary John Morris said it would now be talking to the Equal Opportunities Commission to help draft a formal statement that would let other women fighters be licensed.

"There were concerns expressed about the potential dangers to women," he said, adding that regulations which once obliged boxers to fight bare- chested had now been altered. "We are concerned about the welfare of all our licence-holders," Mr Morris stressed.

There are an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 professional women boxers in other parts of the world, with the majority in the United States and Canada where top-fighters can earn up to $250,000 (pounds 165,000) a fight.

Some critics have claimed there is not same sort of demand for female fighters in Britain, but Glyn Leach, editor of Boxing Monthly, said interest would grow. "Of course there is opposition from old stagers who think women should be stuck at home," he said. "But the proof of the pudding is in the States where there is a great deal of interest, and where top women fighters can earn more than respected and established male world champions."

Not everyone is convinced. Frank Maloney, who manages Lennox Lewis, the WBC world heavyweight champion, said: "I think it is absolutely disgusting that women are being allowed to fight. If anything happens during a women's fight there will be calls for a ban and all those left-wing, do-gooder lesbians who have been fighting Jane Couch's case will be the first to complain.

"The only women you'll find in a ring at one of my fights are very pretty ring-card girls."