London Gay Boxing Club magazine feature

The London Gay Boxing Club is featured in the current issue of Butt magazine.

More info HERE.

World boxing champion patron of GaySportMed track meet

GaySportMed has announced that Myriam Lamare, holder of several championship titles in boxing from the WBA, WBF, and IBF , will be the patron of the upcoming track meet to be held on 28 April in Marseille.

Lamare continues to compete, while serving as a member of the regional assembly of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

More on the efforts of (male) sports leaders to tell (female) athletes that (female) athletes aren't real women

The Los Angeles Times looks at the efforts in boxing (and badminton) to impose a sexist image of what women athletes should look like. We recall the real Olympic tradition of athletes competing nude...

The first competitors won't step into the ring in London for seven months but already a controversy has broken out over women's participation in the Olympic boxing tournament.

Only this time it has nothing to do with a woman's right to fight.

The battle now has shifted to what the women should wear, with some members of the International Amateur Boxing Assn. — the governing body for the sport — urging the boxers to don skirts instead of the baggy shorts they've been wearing.

"This is absurd," complained Patricia Manuel, a former national champion from Long Beach and an Olympic hopeful at 132 pounds. "To put fighters in skirts to label them as women is incredibly outdated. It seems to me sexist."

The Badminton World Federation took a similar stance this month after a marketing firm advised officials that the sport needed to look more feminine to attract fans and sponsors. At its meeting in New Zealand the BWF called for women to ditch the shorts and sweat pants they have traditionally worn and "dress nicely" to "promote the image of badminton," according to Paisan Rangsikitpho, deputy president of the executive board.

"Women should wear women's clothing," Rangsikitpho said in summing up the board's ruling. "BWF wishes all players to be more fashionable and good role models."

Keep reading HERE.

Those stupid fans who can't tell women boxers from men boxers without the skirts

After the pathetic attempts of the World Badminton Federation, news from BBC Sports about yet another international sports federation that thinks sport is about being sexy, that athletic women aren't sexy, and that spectators need reminders that female athletes are girl-type people. 
Women's boxing has always divided opinion but now there are splits within the sport over suggestions that competitors should wear skirts.

The latest talking point is not whether women's boxing should become the newest Olympic discipline at London 2012, but what the boxers will actually wear when they compete.

During last year's World Championships, the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) presented competitors with skirts, rather than the usual shorts, which it wanted to "phase in for international competitions".

AIBA asked boxers to trial the skirts, which they said would allow spectators to distinguish them from men, but at last week's European Championships in Rotterdam only two nations - Poland and Romania - had taken on the alternative outfits.

Keep reading HERE.

Out lesbian boxer sets sights on the Olympics

We received a link to a story about Patricia Manuel in the Los Angeles Times, but couldn't do a post because the article was behind a paywall. So we were pleased to see a post on the Wide Rights blog that links to this article in Long Beach GazettesSports.com:

You should have heard the story of Patricia Manuel back in 2009. That was the year that the bruising boxer, then 24 years old, impressed in a quality showing at the Continental Championships, defeated the British lightweight champion in London and won the U.S. Nationals title. For the fourth time. It was a landmark year for a rising star, and heads began to turn.

Manuel started training with the best in the business, and undefeated pro fighter Javier Molina dubbed the slugger "Peanut" because of her shaved head. But even with impressive accolades and an amateur record that now stands at 47-12, few outside the tight-knit boxing world took notice. "It's annoying when you succeed and the only ones noticing are the people you already see every day," she says. "If no one knows who you are, then what do promoters want you for?"

So Peanut kept her amateur status, putting her professional dreams on hold. These days she works two jobs to pay her way through training and rehab, but Manuel says that remaining amateur was "a no-brainer." Just a few weeks after that decision, women's boxing became an official event for the 2012 London Olympics, for the first time since 1904.

"This time they're going to see a whole different beast," she says. Manuel will have her chance at the spotlight, and could very well become the first woman ever to represent the United States as an Olympic boxer.

The opportunity also strikes a personal chord. Manuel describes herself as an out butch lesbian, and proud of it. She decries recent hate crimes, regularly works with the non-profit Brown Boi Project and hopes to one day start her own organization to assist the LGBTQ community. A boost in exposure could create a new platform for the Golden Gloves winner to serve as a role model outside the ring.

Keep reading HERE.

15 April 2011 / LGBT boxing: news from London and Paris

An LGBT boxing club is being formed in Paris. And we have heard interest from others regarding LGBT boxing. If you would like more info or help in organizing, write blog@gaygames.org and we'll try to put you in touch with other boxers.

Meanwhile, in London, a special kind of gay boxing event is planned. Here's the story from PinkNews:


Radio news editor Scott Roberts is preparing to fight in London’s first ever Pink Collar Boxing show next week.

You may have heard of White Collar Boxing, where city types relieve the stresses of their high-powered jobs by jumping into a boxing ring to throw a few punches at each other.

Pink Collar Boxing is pretty much the same except that all the fighters are gay men, and instead of the trademark busty card girls, topless male models will be doing the honours instead.

London’s first ever Pink Collar Boxing show is taking place at the Scala music venue in Kings Cross on Friday 15th April and money raised on the night will be going to the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Every Saturday for the past three months I have been heading up to Wood Green in north London for a weekly training session with Dermot Mannion, the promoter of Pink Collar Boxing.

While Dermot says it’s not about the winning, if I go down, I go down.

He says: “It’s all about the guys doing their best (on the night) and living the experience of what a boxer goes through. At the end of it both hands go up. There’s isn’t a winner on the night – although if someone goes down, they go down. We’re not going to hold back on the night, it will be full-on!”

Keep reading HERE.