Female boxer promises to belt male opponent

Thanks to Macgregor’s participation, a minor local event scheduled for Seattle, Washington, next Saturday night has become a major sensation in boxing circles.

Macgregor won all of her three previous professional fights against female boxing opponents and is also a successful professional kickboxer. After the man orginally scheduled to fight her, a 23-year-old security guard from Vancouver, British Columbia bowed out, Macgregor is now set to fight another Vancouver man, 34-year-old Loi Chow.

Considering his record of two losses in two fights as a professional boxer,Chow, whose last fight took place in 1996, might be in for a severe beating against an opponent who won many of her fights with knockouts.

Macgregor will step into the ring for four rounds of boxing officially classified as a lightweight bout. Both she and Chow will earn $1500, regardless of who wins.

The main event of Saturday’s boxing extravaganza at Seattle’s Mercer Arena features rising lightweight star Martin O’Malley. But O’Malley’s scheduled 10-round fight against Tito Tovar of Denver, Colorado has become a secondary attraction to the event preceding it.

“The state’s department of licensing gave its approval of the bout after it treated it like any other fight,” a spokeswoman said. The approval was based on many factors, such as weight, skill and a vision exam — gender was not a factor.

State regulators had openly admitted that they were worried about being hit with a discrimination lawsuit if they did not approve the fight.

The state’s former boxing commissioner Dale Ashley tried tointervene with letters and phone calls, calling the upcoming fight “ridiculous” and predicting that “someone is going to get killed”. Ashley even tried to convince state regulators to consider the fight a case of domestic violence.

“No woman in the world has the ability to handle a male fighter in any condition,” Ashley said.

Washington state senator Darlean Fairly, who oversees the Department of Licensing, did not side with Ashley and reminded local reporters that we encourage little girls to play football, what’s the difference? I’m not against it. She wants to fight, let her fight.”

If the fight does indeed last the full four rounds, the two boxers will exchange blows for eight minutes, and even mandatory safety equipment such as chest pads for Macgregor and a cup for Chow will not be enough to avoid messy injuries.

For the longest time, critics of female boxing had successfully used arguments such as the risk of injury to tender bodies to keep women out of the ring. Only recently,all-female boxing matches have increasingly been approved by sports regulators.

Macgregor points out that she is constantly fighting men in sparring rounds, and that she also has faced male blackbelts in karate tournaments. Now it’s time for her to go beyond female opponents in professional fights.

“I don’t see why my options should be limited,” she says.