Boxing

BRITISH BOXING’S only female promoter is fighting to get the sport back on the BBC.Susannah Schofield OBE invested thousands of her own pounds to get her Unified Promotions show on in Rotherham’s Magna Carta arena last month.
Susannah Schofield is heading up Unified promotions in her effort to promote women’s boxingCredit: Unified Boxing
Schofield with another female trailblazer in boxing, world champ Ebanie BridgesCredit: Unified Boxing
And the former Royal Mail director delivered the card to the BBC’s iplayer platform, in the hope of convincing the terrestrial giant to return to the sport.
Casual fans and broadcasters get turned off when the biggest mega-money fights fall through because of doping scandals or clashing egos and companies or end with dodgy scorecards.
But the trailblazer for women’s business has seen enough of the sports positive side to know she wants to help return it to our primetime screens and she’s ready to KO some of the dusty old scams that are holding the sport back.
Schofield, 47 – who is focused on growing the female code but runs mixed cards – told SunSport: “I did twenty years at the Royal Mail so I am used to a very male, testosterone-fuelled environments.
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“And I have always been a boxing fan and loved watching the era of Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson.
“I set Unified up a couple of years ago and did a couple of small shows and thankfully the BBC came and took a look at our last show and said they liked what they saw.
“They were honest enough to say it will be an uphill struggle but we had brilliant viewing figures and now we want to move forward.
“Now we need people to put their money where their mouths are because male sports are still very well sponsored but when you go looking for investment in female sports, the reaction is usually very different.
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“I funded the last event personally and privately to help with our long-term goal but that cannot go on forever so we hope to make it a commercial success soon.”
Schofield has done more than her fair share of research too and shared the rancour among boxing fans who watched the Government spurn the sport during the pandemic when they dished out £300million.
Vote-hungry politicians like Boris Johnson race to local gyms to slap pads when they want more working class voters in their corner.
But when gyms were closed down it took personal donations from the likes of Anthony Joshua to keep them afloat.
Niche sports like basketball, ice hockey and badminton got handouts while boxing starved.
“What was that about?” she added? “That was absolutely crazy.
“Research tells you that if you put a boxing gym in a London town it can halve the crime rate, almost overnight because it teaches kids controlled aggression and how to work as a team.
“I love that part of boxing but it does come with some other parts – in the professional sphere – that are not so easy to love.”
Former Royal Mail director Susannah Schofield wants to deliver more for female fightersCredit: Unified Boxing
Female fighting enjoyed a surge in popularity during lockdown – at behind-closed-doors shows – but there remains a huge gender gap in pay and support that Schofield wants to shorten.
“My job is to normalise womens boxing,” he said. “You don’t think twice about seeing a woman in MMA, or taking a karate class, on a horse or behind the wheel of a car.
“If people watch more womens fights – ours and everyone else’s – they will realise the quality is there.
“I have had female friends who are put off by the idea, then they watch – mainly in support of me – and they change their minds completely.
“Hopefully we and the BBC can work together to get more and more eyeballs on the female sport.”
Certain things have to change at the British Boxing Board of Control, with some of the regulations still archaic.
Schofield – with a hint of humour – explained: “The groin protector is still one fixed height for men and women.
“That might protect a bloke’s crown jewels perfectly, but one punch in the wrong place could do more damage to a woman’s ovaries than her not wearing at all.
“That needs to be changed and maybe we need a new rules and regulations book for women because the current one – printed in 2021 – still lists what HE must and must not do, what HE can and cannot do.
“We are not an add-on anymore, we are part of the industry, it’s a serious sport and we want to be a serious part of it.
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“We want to follow rules and regulations, we want to gurantee the wellbing of ALL boxers and get them all fairly paid.
“This should be a much cleaner and healthier business and the idea of doing any other way is just wrong because it’s such a dangerous sport.” More