Women In Boxing

Now as I am sure you know Katie Taylor has made the decision to turn professional and she will make her pro debut on November the 26th in London. Now since she made her announcement I have read a number of things on social media saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to box, so I had to ask the question why not?  I decided the answer was because people didn’t know much about women’s boxing so in this post I thought it would be a good idea to look at what Katie Taylor has achieved in her career so far, as well as women’s boxing as a whole.

Believe it or not women’s boxing goes back as far as the 18th century, back then women used to fight both men and women.  In the 70s right through to the 90s woman’s boxing was more popular in the USA, however since it became an Olympic sport back in London 2012 and the success of women like Katie Taylor and Natasha Jonas to name but a few the sport seems to have grown in popularity worldwide.

I think that another reason why some people don’t want to see women in the ring is because they believe it’s not proper boxing so I thought it would be a good idea to look at the different rules for men’s and women’s boxing matches, and you may be surprised to learn that there are not a lot of differences. The main difference comes in the equipment that must be worn men only have to wear groin protection were as women have to wear both breast and groin protection. Women are also not allowed to wear makeup during a fight and they must also provide a negative pregnancy test.  The only other different is that the maximum length of a women’s fight is 10 rounds, other than that both men’s and women’s boxing is exactly the same.

So now we’ve looked at women’s boxing as a whole why shouldn’t Katie Taylor go pro, she has already won 18 titles in her career so far including 5 world championships and 1 Olympic gold medal. So the argument could be made that she has already won more in her career than most men do in theirs.  Plus anything that helps grow our sport is surely a good thing. In my opinion I hope she does well and I look forward to following her journey. I also hope that Katie success encourages more women to turn pro, because trust me if that happens there are some big fights out there.

I understand that this is a controversial subject and everyone has their opinions but I would love to know what you think so please comment below