“I suppose it is, main event at Madison Square Garden…” 

Jane Couch doesn’t sound angry, bitter or despondent. She sounds like someone who knew what was going to happen but ultimately, someone who knew it would not involve her when it eventually did. This weekend, when Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano headline at a sold-out Madison Square Garden, Couch will sigh in relief that it made news globally but lament that it’s come 15 years after she called it a day.

Couch was a decorated fighter. A veteran of some 40 fights against the likes of Jamie Clampitt, Lucia Rijker, Holly Holm and Myrian Lamare.

But her biggest battle, her most historic fight, came outside the ropes when he fought to get boxing for women legalised in the United Kingdom. She wound up going through the courts and faced years of institutionalised sexism head on. For many, back then, the idea of women boxing in Britain was absurd.

“Everyone you spoke to would say, ‘Why do you want to box? Women don’t box.’ ‘Well, we do.’ I was just born too soon. I could see it all coming but nobody else could, apparently. The Board absolutely hated it. They said, ‘Why don’t you go and do something that women do?’ ‘Like what?’ ‘Like be a secretary or something…’”

That was an old Board, a different regime, but Couch wonders whether that if she’d not taken on the fight boxing for women would still be outlawed in the UK, because of the cost of court action.

Now women’s boxing is riding high, it’s easy to make Jane’s claims sound like hyperbole, but when you think back in time, where we are now is a long way removed from what Jane had to encounter.

It’s not just women’s boxing but women’s sport has forced its way to the top of sporting agendas.

“It’s brilliant,” Jane reiterated about Taylor-Serrano. “[It’s] twenty years too late but it’s good, at least we’re there now. It will only get bigger now, because that Shields-Marshall one will be massive.”

Did Couch think we would ever get here, where two of the most sought-after fights in the sport involve women? 

“I did really,” Couch continued. “Because when I was boxing in America I was boxing on all the big shows and on the same bills as Naz, Roy Jones, Lennox [Lewis] and it was happening over there, and they were loving it. It was the UK that wasn’t, but now the UK has taken over.”

Times have changed, but boy did they need to.

Yes, it’s important to acknowledge how far boxing has come, but it’s also important to remember how long it’s taken.

Only now are female fighters being inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Only a few years ago were women allowed to attend the Boxing Writers’ Club annual dinner in England. Only a few years ago, women’s fights were seen as novelty attractions and a few years before that boxing PR lady Patti Dreifuss was refused entry to a weigh in because she was a female, though fortunately that didn’t stop her winning the BWAA ‘Good guy’ award in 1999, which she shared with Tom Kenvile. The BWAA, by the way, started to include a Female Fighter of the Year in 2017 and that same Boxing Writers’ Club in England mentioned previously has a woman listed in their contenders for their prestigious Young Boxer of the Year Award this year.

In fact, Jane also was treated like a second-class citizen by that Club. She was invited by a journalist one year only to be refused entry. She had to spend the night sat at the bar outside while the men went inside to eat.

Yet in America, she remembers Holm being treated “like a superstar” while she was shunned at home.

Like Taylor, Jane was a household name in the UK but, by her own admission, “for the wrong reasons.” She was often on TV shows, but, as she explained, it was about “Should women box? Yes or no? Doing polls on Richard and Judy [talk show], they didn’t work on the fact that you were in the hardest sport in the world, flying all over the world trying to win a fight.”

Taylor is a star on both sides of the Atlantic and Jane is happy to see it.

“I always follow the women now,” Couch added. “Katie is very good. Her skills are amazing. I think Taylor will win because she’s naturally bigger. She’s fighting a featherweight or super-feather. Serrano is good and very skilful, I just don’t think she’ll carry the power at our weight. She’s no Lucia Rijker! She [Rijker] was brilliant but the power was something else. Serrano had the power at the lower weight classes but she’s never boxed anyone at this weight.”

What about Taylor? Can her experience amateur and pro yet be deemed to be a high-mileage?

“Katie is 35, I just think she’ll rise,” Couch said. “It’s the biggest exposure the women are going to get and I don’t think it matters who wins, because it’s just going to be a great showcase for women.”

Then, with a nod to the dubious scorecards boxing seems to throw up with regularity, Jane added: “We can’t predict a fight because we don’t know with these judges. I’ve given up predicting fights because the judges always mess it up for you.”

Taylor and Serrano are breaking new ground. Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall will do the same but it’s important to remember those who fought before and the very different fights they had to endure.

“You’ve always got to have a first at something and Katie Taylor never struggled,” Couch said, happy for Taylor but clearly disappointed she came along when she did. “She [Katie] went straight in with a good manager, trainer… everything was there for her because of people like Christy Martin, Lucia Rijker and myself, there was no struggle for them. I had to fight in and out of the ring.”

And through it all, Couch never quit. Tonight’s fight in New York might be in the US but many big nights lie ahead for the women in England and that’s what Jane really saw before anyone else. She saw the lively market in America, she experienced it, and she felt sure that one day it would be back in the UK. It’s taken a while, but it’s here now.

“I’d seen it all before anyone in the UK because I was doing it in America,” Couch concluded. “But no one here could see it.”

They see it now.