‘The Final Round’ is the autobiography of Jane Couch, co-written by Abi Smith and published by Pitch Publishing.
It feels like perfect timing that I am writing this blog post about the autobiography of one of the most influential women boxers in recent history, while my wife and I are at one of the world’s largest all-female amateur boxing tournaments: The Golden Girl Championship in Borås, Sweden. While Jane is best known for breaking barriers in the professional code, it’s undeniable that her efforts there paved the way for the advances in the amateur game also.
The book opens with a foreword which aims to frame the context of the authors’ exploration of Jane’s career by highlighting a fairly recent (at time of publication) event in which she was advised, for the benefit of her mental health, to let go of the past and her boxing career in the form of a funeral. She was to metaphorically bury the past to enable her to move into a freer and more content future.
I’m glad the decision was made to explore this ritual, as I’m sure this advice would help many people, not least boxers. Regardless of our professions we will all reach a point in life where we need to let go of a younger version of ourselves in order to grow older without regrets. This could equally be from a position of huge success and a feeling of dread for the future, or a position of not being able to forget past failings; either way we all need to realise that we have the ability to evolve and redefine what forms our identity. A funeral in this case could also be viewed as a rebirth.
Jane first decided to take up boxing after seeing a TV documentary about women boxers Christy Martin and Deidre Gogarty, the result of which was bugging her dad until he took her to a local boxing gym in Fleetwood, Lancashire. This is the first insight into the barriers that Jane would face as a woman wanting to box. Beyond the sad occurrence of men simply trying to laugh Jane out of the gym, when she did find a coach in Frank Smallbone, he eventually lost his trainer’s licence for first agreeing to, and then refusing to stop, coaching her.
Jane later decided that in order to forward her career she would need to leave Fleetwood, and she settled into a Bristol-based gym where, although she wasn’t allowed to box as a licensed professional, she was at least able to earn some money fighting in unlicensed bouts. The irony here, of course, is that, by not allowing women to gain professional boxing licences (because it was baselessly decided that they couldn’t cope with the rigours of a potentially dangerous sport), they were forced into an unregulated world of mismatches and (even more) unscrupulous promoters, who put ticket sales beyond the safety of the boxers.
Of course, Jane is best known for her legal battle with the British Boxing Board of Control, when in 1998 she was approached by Sara Leslie and Dinah Rose QC, who felt there was a strong case to be brought against the BBBoC on the grounds of discrimination. As it turned out, the BBBoC were close to being laughed out of court when they revealed that their position was mostly based on their belief that women were simply too mentally and emotionally unstable to box.
I have heard several people comment that Jane was only ever interested in preserving the interests of ‘Jane Couch’; but it is important to remember that in 1998 there was no community of women boxers to promote, organise or support, and this sensible legal case was intended to prove that this individual was being denied her right to earn a living in her country of birth, due to the BBBoC’s arcane rules based on misguided views around gender. What can’t be denied is that, whatever her perceived motives were, this legal case has had a profound effect on women’s boxing worldwide, not just in the UK.
Without the profile of professional boxing, not nearly as many girls would be drawn to amateur boxing in the first place. It was fantastic to watch Jane lead out Natasha Jonas before her recent televised bout against Mikaela Mayer in Liverpool. It really felt like British boxing had finally come together to show Jane how much she means to the business.
Of course, it’s no surprise that a boxer took on such a stubborn organisation and won. The very nature of the sport breeds a bloodymindedness and drive to never give up in the face of adversity. It seems a wonder that the BBBoC ever tried to mount its own defence. There is a very evenhanded passage in the book, when the BBBoC is given the benefit of the doubt and it is suggested that, at a board level, they always knew it was a losing battle but they felt that they at least needed to look publicly as though they had put up a fight, and were simply ‘forced to change’. Who knows if there is any truth in this though.
Either way, none of British boxing’s establishment comes out particularly well from this passage of history. Boxing News, for example, refused to make any mention of Jane’s first world light-welterweight title, even though they covered the rest of the card. Their response at the time? We don’t cover women’s boxing.
These many sad stories are offset in the book when Jane talks of individual supportive boxers and trainers who eventually helped to change the attitudes of others. And as most regular attendees of boxing gyms will know, the respect often comes after you’ve proved your commitment to the routine and grind of training:
They didn’t give me the time of day at first, but they soon realised I was one of them, a fighter, and all boxers have respect for other boxers. They know how hard it is.
This is one aspect of Jane’s career that shines throughout the book: many of the struggles that she faced were the result of her being a professional boxer, regardless of gender. I think it is testament to the path she carved for herself that she ran into the same problems as her male counterparts. For example, how does a prospect continue to sell tickets to the casual fan who may find it harder and harder to part with cash to watch a sport they only have a passing interest in:
It became a battle again to get fights, it seemed that everyone (including me) had been swept up in me boxing in this country and now the furore had died down, everything went back to the way it was. It was like the promoters thought, ‘Fuck it, we’ve done our bit, we don’t need to put her on anymore.’ And for a fighter to get fights, they need to sell tickets. I had to be able to sell 500 tickets to cover the opponent’s wage, and OK I had a goodish following in Fleetwood and family and friends but it was hard selling that number of tickets to people who, once they had seen a female fight, were almost of the opinion that they had ‘ticked’ a life-experience box.
For all the stress and hardship Jane experienced throughout her career (I haven’t even touched on her often going without food and contact with family while living on ‘The Farm’ in Bristol), the book ends with a brilliantly reflective quote, no doubt reached due to her ability to realise the funeral ritual mentioned in the book’s foreword:
Yes, the fight to get women boxing was terrible but look what we achieved. The girls now, who can just go into a gym, any gym, and not have any of the shit that I had, that’s what it’s all about. It’s just… well, brilliant isn’t it?
And for anyone who may question women and girls’ place in boxing, then just get yourself along to Borås next January/February, or just about any amateur show in Britain, and take a look at the commitment shown by these athletes and the level of competition at the elite level. Or watch someone like Hannah Foulds (who never let up during the nine minutes of her debut for Islington Boxing Club at The Golden Girl Championship), and then see if you still think they don’t deserve their place in the sport. Because if you think they don’t, I really feel you need to explore where these opinions are rooted. Perhaps these prejudices of yours need a little funeral ritual of their own. Just lay them to rest, like.
Writers on Boxing 
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