‘I’m so glad this day has come’: women’s boxing’s journey to headlining Madison Square Garden

Eddie Hearn and Jane Couch could hardly be more different but they are united this week by a shared disbelief and delight. As we approach the landmark moment on Saturday night when Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano step into the ring at Madison Square Garden in New York to contest the most significant and lucrative fight in the history of women’s boxing, the promoter and the pioneer sound relieved and ecstatic.

Twenty-four years ago Couch won her case against the British Boxing Board of Control when the high court ruled that she should become the first woman in the UK to be granted a licence to box professionally. Until then the BBBC had banned women from the ring on the basis that they were too frail and “emotionally unstable” to box, owing to their menstrual cycle.

Three years later, in October 2001, Katie Taylor fought in the first officially sanctioned women’s boxing match in Ireland. She was just 15. Taylor and Serrano will now feature in a riveting bout as they become the first female boxers to both earn more than $1m in one night – and the first women to headline the Garden as fighters.

In another unlikely double act, Hearn is co-promoting the contest with the YouTube star Jake Paul. The Essex promoter listens quietly in a swanky lounge on West 35th Street, just a few blocks from the most famous arena in boxing, as I tell him a story about the days when his dad, Barry, was shocked to hear Couch had not been paid for a fight. It makes us feel that, after decades of prejudice and pain, women’s boxing has finally been transformed.

Talking to me on the phone from England, Couch says of Taylor and Serrano’s historic bout: “I can’t believe it, but it’s brilliant. I’m so glad this day has come.”

For Hearn, meanwhile, “this