Jane Couch
| Jane Couch | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Statistics | |
| Real name | Jane Couch |
| Nickname(s) | The Fleetwood Assassin |
| Rated at |
Welterweight Light Welterweight Lightweight |
| Height | 67 in (1.7 m) |
| Nationality | United Kingdom |
| Born |
14 August 1968 Fleetwood, Lancashire, England |
| Boxing record | |
| Total fights | 39 |
| Wins | 28 |
| Wins by KO | 9 |
| Losses | 11 |
| Draws | 0 |
| No contests | 0 |
Jane Couch, MBE (born 14 August 1968) became the first officially licensed British female boxer in 1998. In a 14-year professional career, she won numerous world titles and announced her retirement from boxing on 1 December 2008. Couch has since become a boxing promoter.
Born in Fleetwood, Lancashire, Couch was expelled from her school in Blackpool and thereafter lived "a life of booze, drugs and street fighting". At the age of 26 she saw a television documentary about women's boxing and decided to try it. In her first official fight, a Muay Thai match, she defeated a policewoman, about which she said "it was brilliant to flatten one [a police officer] and get paid for it". She currently resides in Bristol.
The British Boxing Board of Control initially refused to grant Couch a professional licence on the sole ground that she was a woman, and argued that PMS made women too unstable to box. Claiming sexual discrimination and supported by the Equal Opportunities Commission, Couch managed to have this decision overturned by a tribunal in March 1998. However, some criticism followed as the British Medical Association called this result "a demented extension of equal opportunities".
Couch would later seek the right to fight a male opponent, but was unsuccessful. Of this, she said
Going into the ring against a man wouldn't bother me. I spar with blokes seven days a week so it's not as if it would be a new experience. It would mean an awful lot to me to appear at Wembley.
Couch's first major success occurred in only her fifth pro fight in 1996 when she won the WIBF light welterweight title by outpointing France's Sandra Geiger over ten rounds in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Couch's first defence of her title was against noted female boxer Andrea DeShong, who was stopped in seven rounds in New Orleans, Louisiana in March 1997.
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