Jane Couch boxer

Jane Couch, MBE (born 14 August 1968) is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1994 to 2007. She became the first officially licensed British female boxer in 1998, and won numerous world titles. 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".