Women's boxing
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Women's boxing has existed as an officiated sport since the beginning of the 20th century.
Compared to men's boxing, however, it lacked popularity and exposure. This might be attributed to the fact that women's boxing, at that period, confronted a society filled with stereotypes and which categorized professions as either 'men's work' or 'women's work'. Machism was predominant during a large part of last century, and therefore women's boxing couldn't attain a lot of fanfare for most of it.
It should be noted that during the 1970s, a popular female boxer came out of the United States Northwest. Her name was Cathy 'Cat' Davis and a few of her fights were televised. To this day, she remains the only female boxer to appear on the cover of Ring Magazine. But a scandal broke out where it was said that some of her fights had been fixed, and as a consequence, women's boxing as a sport was almost killed.
During the 1980s, women's boxing briefly resurfaced in California under the wings of sisters Dora and Cora Webber. The twin sisters were world champions and packed crunching punching power and a good chin.
But the boom of women's boxing came during the 1990s, coinciding with the boom of professional women sports leagues such as the WNBA and WUSA, and with boxers such as Delia 'Chikita' Gonzalez, Laura Serrano, Christy Martin, Deirdre Gogarty, Laila Ali, Jackie Frazier-Lyde, Lucia Rijker, Ada Velez, Ivonne Caples, Bonnie Canino and Sumya Anani, all world champions, jumping into the scene. Nowadays, women's boxing's fan base is growing with a lot of television exposure and interesting fights. There are a few organizations that recognize world championship bouts, and fights are held in more than 100 countries worldwide.