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I couldn’t see a way out.”Ī year after she retired, in 2008, Couch had a breakdown. ‘Is she a freak? Should she be allowed to box?’ When people keep calling you a freak you think, ‘Maybe I am?’ Three years before I retired I would just sit on my own, crying.

#FEMALE BOXER BRAIDS BOXING FIGHTER TV#

I’d be on TV shows like Richard and Judy and they would have phone-ins for people to vote.

She put her arms around me and goes: ‘I don’t want to tell you this, but your fight’s just beginning.’”Ĭouch’s eyes are clear again. We left the press conference after the court case. We won but, when I got the licence, I thought: ‘It will be all right now.’ The abuse got worse. I was already a double world champion and the board was stopping me making a living in this country. She used that but focused on restraint of trade. “Dinah messed them up because they thought she was going only on sex discrimination. They went: ‘Jane, it’s terrible.’ I was like: ‘This isn’t that bad compared to what I’ve been through.’ I apologised to Dinah and Sarah because they’re middle-class women. We were all young and one of the journalists wrote that we looked like three lesbians. Sarah Leslie, the solicitor who died of breast cancer at 42, and Dinah Rose, the top sex-discrimination barrister in the country by a mile. Her victory changed sport in this country but Couch shakes her head. Photograph: John Gichigi/Getty ImagesĪt the heart of Couch’s engaging new book, The Final Round, she details the legal battle she waged against the boxing board which peddled views of women more suited to the 1890s than the 1990s. Jane Couch on her way to beating Australia’s Sharon Anyos for the WBF lightweight title in 1999, the year after winning her case against the British Board of Boxing Control. Most of them had never met me and they’d call me a lesbian or a freak.” It hurts my pride to talk this openly but I don’t think people realise the damage they did. She wipes her eyes and apologises for crying. If you hold it in, Jane, you’ll only do more damage.’” “I didn’t think I was but the counsellors and doctors encourage you to talk. The 51-year-old Couch looks up when I say her scars seem more like wounds. I’ll fight in France, Germany or America.’” I was my own worst enemy because I’d just argue with Frank Maloney and Frank Warren. I didn’t even get into a proper relationship until I was 41. “But if I had known what it would cost me I probably wouldn’t have done it. I wish I hadn’t gone through all that shit.”Ĭouch nods when I ask if it’s OK to continue.

When we take a break, because it is so upsetting for her, Couch says simply: “I wish I hadn’t been the first. She retired 10 years ago but today, as she relives the past trauma, her usual laughter is replaced by grief. I have known Couch since the late 1990s, when I first interviewed her, and she is one of the most admirable and kindest people I’ve met in boxing.

At home Couch was shunned by boxing promoters and mocked on television and in the tabloids. She still struggled to get fights and there were many times when she travelled abroad and, after brutal bouts, was not even paid. Her world titles and landmark legal victory were of little benefit to Couch. She and Geiger both ended up in hospital.

#FEMALE BOXER BRAIDS BOXING FIGHTER CRACKED#

Couch suffered a broken jaw, shattered cheekbone, fractured eye-socket, cracked ribs and a missing tooth but she still won a unanimous decision over 10 rounds. She had flown to Denmark to face Sandra Geiger, the French world champion who came from a kickboxing background. They are too fragile to box and they bruise easily.”īut Couch had shown her mettle to win her first world title in only her fifth fight in 1996. Bernard Buckley, the board’s solicitor, built his case on the claim that “many women suffer from premenstrual tension which makes them more emotional and more labile and accident-prone. Couch had to win a court case against the sport’s governing body to make British sporting history in August 1998.

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