With spilled blood, red paint, and plenty of action, women’s boxing takes centre stage

On Friday (September 27), we saw the return of Alycia Baumgardner, the women’s super-featherweight champion who had been inactive since beating Christina Linardatou in July 2023. Baumgardner, 15-1 (7), remains the owner of the WBC, IBF and WBO belts, having failed but then overturned a positive performance-enhancing drug test, and on Friday defended them in a fan-friendly fight against Belgium’s Delfine Persoon. It was a fight Baumgardner started well, even dropping Persoon in round one, yet disappointment was to follow – shared, mutual – when Baumgardner caught Persoon with her head after overshooting a right hand. This resulted in a cut above Persoon’s eye and the fight being stopped in round four due to an accidental head clash. “A no contest,” said referee Laurence Cole, reminding Persoon, bloodied and apoplectic, that for there to be a winner the bout required four completed rounds. “An accidental injury.”

As is often the case in these situations, neither boxer went home content, much less happy. Baumgardner, having started so well, left the venue in Atlanta with her belts in her bag but without the feeling of any lost time being clawed back. Persoon, meanwhile, someone who likes to warm into fights and start motoring in the second half, was cut down in her prime and now exited Lux Studios looking different than how she had entered it. 

In New York that same night, Britain’s Sandy Ryan entered another venue, the Theater at Madison Square Garden, feeling differently than how she would have expected. She had, by that stage, cleaned from her body all traces of the red paint that had been thrown at her as she exited her hotel, but still the impact of it stuck around, if just now on her mind rather than body. 

Suddenly, having for days visualised the fight and what would happen on the night, Ryan’s head was a mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions, torn between animal instinct and the cool detachment a fighter requires, like either gloves or a mouthpiece, before the first bell. Whereas before she could imagine and focus only on one enemy, now she had another, one whose identity was a mystery and one whose motive was every bit as elusive. 

That, for a boxer heading into a fight, is maybe the worst thing to experience. After all, with them already preparing to go into the unknown, this place of cruel uncertainty, the last thing a boxer wants is to be hit with a puzzle – or simply a ricket in the routine – en route to their destination. 

Alas, that is exactly what Ryan experienced on Friday. No sooner had she left her hotel than she was ambushed outside by a stranger and now, as a consequence, would spend too many subsequent minutes and hours wondering both who and why. Even in brief moments when she may have forgotten about it, and returned her focus to her opponent, Ryan found it difficult not to connect the two: the paint job and Mikaela Mayer, the opponent. She said, when asked about the incident by ESPN’s Mark Kriegel, “It’s got to be (connected to Mayer). Who else would it be? I’m from the U.K. Who’s going to hit and run me? Who knew what time I was coming down from my hotel to the venue? Who knew? Someone from her team was saying, ‘She’s coming now.’ They knew what time.”

All Ryan could do in the aftermath was try to convince herself that an incident like that could somehow prove to be a motivation rather than a distraction. “I’m here now,” she said. “Keep throwing things at me. That’s what they’re trying to do. I’ve been professional. I’ve done my job. They’re still trying to ruin my mindset. But I’m here to fight.”

In the end, nobody can say with any degree of certainty whether “paint-gate” derailed Sandy Ryan on Friday night and led to her losing her WBO welterweight title, but that is ultimately what happened. Mayer, a former rival of Baumgardner’s, got her own career back on track to the tune of a majority decision (97-93, 96-94, 95-95) and has now claimed a world title in a second weight class after previously thriving as a super-featherweight. 

Between those two weight classes sits lightweight, of course, and it was in this division that Terri Harper wrote a redemption story of her own when outpointing Rhiannon Dixon to grab the WBO belt on Saturday (September 28). This fight took place in Sheffield, England and sparked into life in its second half, by which point Dixon, the champion, had started coming on strong, even hurting Harper in round six, and Harper, the more experienced of the two, was being forced to dig deep and not give any ground. 

It was not a fight on the same level as Ryan-Mayer, either in terms of quality or drama, but it was no less engaging and still featured plenty in the way of momentum shifts and two-way action. In fact, coming as it did after Ryan-Mayer and Baumgardner-Persoon, the fight between Harper and Dixon was yet another reminder of just how consistent and competitive top-level women’s boxing tends to be whenever it is permitted to take center stage. (These three fights were all headliners, by the way.)

Often, though it may not boast the one-punch, blink-and-you-miss-it drama of a heavyweight fight involving two men, there is a kind of magic produced whenever two women butt heads over 10 two-minute rounds. Frantic and ferocious, there is by the very nature of its construct no time to mess around, settle down, or buy time in a top-level fight between two females. What you get instead is a constant feeling of urgency and the need to do more, something conducive to ample leather being thrown and almost as many swings in momentum. That is perhaps why fights between women are touted as Fight of the Year contenders with increasing regularity these days and why the format of 10 two-minute rounds persists despite some female boxers pleading for sanctioning bodies to give them 12 three-minute rounds and therefore a little more room to breathe. 

Certainly, there is a solid argument for that, particularly given the dearth of eye-catching knockouts in the women’s game and the importance of them when it comes to winning over fans and sustaining their interest during a fight. Reduce the potential for this knockout and occasionally a fight can meander, or the attention of the viewer can, and there becomes almost an assumption that the fight will go the distance and that every round will resemble the one that preceded it. In such instances fights, although action-packed, can sometimes lack the edge-of-the-seat drama that becomes a feature and indeed selling point of something like Dubois vs. Joshua, for example. It can leave a fan thrilled to see so many punches thrown but wondering at the same time when one of these punches will change the course of the fight or deliver them the emphatic finish both they, and likely the boxers, covet, removing as it does the need for any scorecards. 

Equally, however, the 10 two-minute round format seems, for now, to get the best out of female boxers and showcases them at their most intense and entertaining. It separates them somewhat from their male counterparts and gives fights between females a different feeling and flavour, one that is not altogether unpleasant. If anything, it is closer to a palate cleanser. It offers many things you don’t get in a fight between men and rarely does a fight between two women drag or feel as though it has killed the momentum of a fight card. Quite the opposite, in fact. For boxing, a sport forever at risk of dereliction, it has in recent years provided a fresh lick of paint.