LAS VEGAS – Sue Fox has gone from being a vocal critic of women not being inducted into Hall of Fames to remedying the problem by creating one for them.

Last week, the Women’s International Boxing Hall of Fame held its latest gala and award ceremony at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Fox, who had run Women’s Boxing Archive Network, an online publication, since 1998, started the women’s Hall of Fame in 2014 to honor great women’s fighters she saw getting overlooked.

“We continued to see women not being put in Hall of Fames,” Fox told BoxingScene. “I used to ridicule other Hall of Fames. People kept saying, ‘If anybody were to do a [women’s] Hall of Fame, it would be you,’ because no one else cares to do something to help the women.

“I just got tired of the discrimination, to be honest with you. I thought it was so unfair that I didn't see women being inducted,” Fox said. “I'd write some pretty scorching articles at the time.”

Fox, a former fighter who is listed in her biography as the No. 1 rated women’s fighter in 1979, was also the first woman to train with Carlos Palomino in Westchester, California.

Fox’s origin story was a tough one.

“They put me in with a bantamweight the second day I was in the gym,” Fox recalled. “I had already been boxing, and I had a martial arts background, so I knew how to fight, and they instructed him to knock me out. They figured that would get me out of the gym.”

“We went four rounds, and he beat the crap out of me,” Fox said. “I was a welterweight, so he's smaller than me, too, but he hit me everywhere he could. And at the end of the sparring, I didn’t want to let them know that he hurt me so badly, so we took our gloves off. I shook his hands and I said, 'Hey, let's spar tomorrow.’”

That was the last thing she actually wanted to do, but it sent a message: She wasn't going away.

On the day BoxingScene caught up with her, Fox was hanging up banners and posters for a midday event to honor women’s boxers in law enforcement. The award ceremony was the following day. Fox worked as a police officer herself. Before her event, the WBC had a two-day women’s summit with various keynote speakers talking about all kinds of topics applicable to women’s boxing.

“It's amazing how it's grown,” Fox said. “If you saw my first Hall of Fame, it's grown tremendously. I had no idea that it would get to this level.”

With inductions this year of Don King, Shelly Vincent, Jill Matthews and many others, Fox’s Hall of Fame honors the great women’s boxers and those who helped women in boxing, who continue to shape the sport. She wants to pay tribute to those who paved the way for the current generation.

“I just hope that the sport continues to grow and that we see women get opportunities to fight for the larger purses and get more opportunities to be on cards,” Fox said. “We still see a lot of cards that do not have women on them. So I hope that the promoters will at least support one or two fights, even if it's on the undercard, and let's just always keep the women active.”

Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @BigDogLukie.