Women boxers want to fight by men’s rules

The fight for gender equality has reached professional boxing. One of the main stars of women’s fights, absolute world champion Amanda Serrano made a loud demarche by refusing the World Boxing Council (WBC) championship belt. This organization does not sanction women’s matches in the men’s format – 12 rounds of three minutes each. Serrano believes that in this way she is violating her right to the same conditions of competition as male boxers.

The statement of Puerto Rican Amanda Serrano turned into a very high-profile event in the world of professional boxing. In her Instagram account (owned by Meta, whose activities are recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation and are prohibited), she reported that refuses from her World Boxing Council championship belt in the up to 57.2 kg category. In it, 35-year-old Serrano, one of the brightest stars of women’s boxing, owns the titles of other significant structures: the World Boxing Association (WBA), the International Boxing Federation (IBF) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO).

The reason for the athlete’s refusal of the title was given as “the WBC’s reluctance to move towards equality.”

What kind of equality is meant is clear. Amanda Serrano’s demarche is a continuation of a fresh sports trend. In a number of sports, including football, female athletes have recently staged various campaigns to draw attention to the fact that their working conditions differ from those enjoyed by men. The trend entered professional boxing this year. In October, over a dozen women involved in it, including virtually all the celebrities of the genre – such as Amanda Serrano, Chantel Cameron, Michaela Mayer, Holly Holm, Natasha Jonas, Ramla Ali – issued a joint appeal. In it, they pointed out that “for a long period of time” women’s boxing was actually discriminated against in terms of “promotion and financing.”

One of the main demands of the female athletes was to provide the same format of fights as the men, that is, 12 rounds of three minutes for the top ones. The format of women’s fights currently provides for two-minute rounds, of which there can be no more than ten.

Explaining why such a requirement seems extremely important to Amanda Serrano and her colleagues, “a prerequisite for progress,” is quite simple. The fact is that research has long proven that entertainment and thrill in rounds, which increase the demand and commercial appeal of performances, as a rule, increase sharply after two minutes, when opponents become tired. The functionaries justified the softer women’s regulations by caring for the safety and health of athletes.

In this sense, a breakthrough for a group of activists should have been the match in which Amanda Serrano met Danila Ramos on October 27 in Orlando, USA. Its organizers decided to use a men’s format – 12 rounds of three minutes each. The fight eventually went the full distance and turned out to be quite intense, but despite this, the participants did not receive serious injuries.

At the same time, three structures – WBA, IBF and WBO – recognized the fight, in which Serrano defended her status as an absolute champion, as legitimate. The exception was the WBC, which did not put its own belt on the line. In her statement, Serrano equated his stance with ignoring the “right to choose” that any female athlete should have, warning that unless the oldest body that controls professional boxing changes it, she “will not fight for it.”

However, WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman had previously warned that this position would remain the same, pointing out that boxing is by no means the only sport in which women have different regulations compared to men.

He cited “non-contact” basketball and tennis as examples. Basketball players, as Suleiman noted, have shorter matches than basketball players (meaning NBA basketball players), and the ball is lighter, and tennis players play exclusively three-set matches, while for men at Grand Slam tournaments they can consist of five games.

Alexey Dospehov