The Final Round by Jane Couch & Abi Smith

Author:Jane Couch & Abi Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Taking the devil to court

‘For future female British boxing champions, indeed, all women who choose to box, Jane’s name is set to acquire all the resonance of the most prominent suffragettes.’

Irish Times

IF there is a date I will never forget, that is etched in my memory forever and won’t ever lose its significance, I would say that Monday, 30 March 1998 is it. It’s not just a date that means something to me either, it’s a date that, factually speaking, changed the course of history. I think about that date now and wonder how different life would be, how this juggernaut of an event, which took place in a small courtroom in south London, not only changed my life but the lives of hundreds of sportswomen in the years to come.

And the funny thing is, I hadn’t planned to be part of it. I was someone who was just trying to earn a living through boxing and was frustrated that this was something I couldn’t do in this country. After my fight in New Orleans I was taking part in the usual press conference when I said something that was to cause an equal rights solicitor to prick up her ears. I hadn’t got paid, I was cross. If I was a British male boxer in America I would have support, I would be covered by the British Boxing Board of Control who would look after me. But I was a woman, I had no back-up, I had no licence, no one was going to help me.

Tex had just told me that I had been offered a big money fight in Wembley. I’d been knocked for six. Here I was, just lost out on payment in America, and now I had to turn down a ten-grand fight in my own country as I wasn’t legally allowed to box in England.

I was mad, and during that interview my frustration showed.

‘I want to fight in my own country, I’ve been offered a fight at Wembley for £10k but the bastards won’t let me box cos they won’t give me a licence,’ I ranted to journalists. It wasn’t tactful but it was the truth. I didn’t care by then. I honestly didn’t expect anything to come from it. And then I had a phone call that was going to change my life.

Sara Leslie, a pioneering solicitor in the area of discrimination law and equal pay, wasn’t someone I was ever likely to meet in my entire life if I hadn’t said those angry words at that press conference. And yet she was someone who has changed my entire life too.

She wanted to know a bit more about me, what I had been doing and who I had been fighting and where. She wanted to know about the title I had won and retained. And lastly, she wanted to know exactly why I couldn’t fight at Wembley and earn £10,000. She had no knowledge of the boxing world, no idea who was in

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