This weekend finally sees the delayed 02 Arena all-female boxing supercard take place. The main event will pit Claressa Shields against Savannah Marshall for the undisputed middleweight championship. The chief support features Mikaela Mayer facing Alycia Baumgardner. There are also outings for Olympic gold medalist Lauren Price, Olympic bronze medalist Karriss Artingstall and unbeaten prospect Caroline Dubois. It’s a stacked show from top-to-bottom.
This stacked show is just more evidence that women’s boxing is a landscape where the biggest fights get made. This year we have already seen Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano square off in the biggest female fight in the history of the sport. That Taylor victory will be right up there when Fight of the Year voting starts, but it was far from a one-off. In the 17 weight divisions in boxing, there are 12 female unified champions. In men’s boxing there are nine. The female half of the sport is just more effective at getting the best in the ring with the best.
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The road to the biggest fights has not been as smooth in men’s boxing. Presently, WBC, WBA and IBF champion Errol Spence Jr’s welterweight unification with WBO counterpart Terence Crawford is up in the air. The bout has been on the table for years and, with Spence winning the WBA belt from Yordenis Ugas in April, it finally looked like the right time to pull the trigger. But after months of talks we are still no closer to the two best 147-pounders in the world sharing a ring.
The heavyweight division has been subject to similarly-botched discussions in recent years. At one point or another various combinations of Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, Oleksandr Usyk, Deontay Wilder and Andy Ruiz Jr could have given us an undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. All those potential fights collapsed. Even without the added complication of the four heavyweight belts, ‘AJ’ vs Fury has just disintegrated again.
So why does women’s boxing have it’s s**t together in a way its male equivalent could only dream of? There is certainly something to be said for being a growing sport. While professional male boxing is centuries old and has its neuroses firmly embedded, there is a sense of the brave new world around the women’s game. With its comparatively recent rise to prominence, it seems apt to try and iron out some of the weaker aspects of the men’s game.
There is also the fact that as a relatively youthful discipline on the mainstream stage, the fighters have less to lose. Not many female fighters are walking around with bulky 50-fight records just waiting to be shattered with an inopportune loss. There are exceptions of course. Veteran Serrano has 46 fights under her multiple world championship belts. But other top names have fought far less. Katie Taylor has a 21-0 record. This weekend’s main eventers each have 12-0 ledgers. World title fights tend to arrive quicker in women’s boxing, meaning that these fighters aren’t amassing 20 learning fights against boxers with losing records before meeting ranked challengers.
Women’s boxing skews closer to mixed martial arts than men’s boxing on this score. In the UFC, fighters can lose fights and be given the opportunity to bounce back. Their defeats are viewed merely as willingness to fight all comers rather than as a stain on their character. In the men’s boxing game, where the marketability of a fighter’s 0 is paramount, too many boxers go through their career avoiding defeat rather than seeking the greatest victories.
That leaves us where we are now, with boxing’s best women facing off while boxing’s finest men avoid each other. It’s why cards like Saturday’s O2 extravaganza are to be savoured. Where else are you going to see two big-money title unifications back-to-back, on a card decorated with a new generation of Olympic talent and hot prospects? If fights like ‘AJ’-Fury and Spence-Crawford continue to be neglected, then certainly not in men’s boxing.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject To Change
