Review of The Promise of Women's Boxing

The Promise of Women's Boxing: A Momentous New Era for the Sweet Science

By Malissa Smith

Rowman & Littlefield, 2024

Malissa Smith's new book is a celebration of women's boxing since the 2012 Olympics, which is when her seminal A History of Women's Boxing leaves off. In her first book, Smith mainly assumes the role of historian while in this effort she serves primarily as a journalist. Impressively, she wears both hats well.

After the forward by the GWOAT, Claressa Shields, The Promise of Women's Boxing starts with the CliffsNotes version of A History of Women's Boxing to provide context for the modern era. Smith focuses on the recent U.S. and U.K. scenes although she includes the impact of the sport in a variety of countries around the world. The important international amateur tournaments including the Olympics, the pro careers of the stars that arose from those tournaments, the "Old Gang," women's boxing in popular culture, and much more fill the pages.

To cover the length and breadth of such a vast topic is virtually impossible, yet Smith does so expertly. One of the many interesting issues in the book is the tension between the Old Gang of boxers who turned pro before the 2012 Olympics and the amateur standouts like Shields and Katie Taylor who ushered in a new age of prominence for women's boxing. Cecilia Braekhus, Layla McCarter, Melissa Hernandez, and many other fighters performed at a high level in relative obscurity and poverty. Some have been rightfully frustrated at their lack of fame and fortune relative to recent stars like Shields and Taylor.

Another fascinating subject is the complicated relationship between the International Boxing Association (IBA, formerly AIBA) and the growth of women's boxing. The IBA was instrumental in the rise of the sport, creating a category for female boxers in the World Championships and in the Olympics, which propelled the popularity of women's boxing. However, the IBA is a scandal-ridden organization that has since been expelled from running the Olympic boxing tournament. 

This book is truly a remarkable achievement, but it's not perfect. A few typos with names, such as calling Mikaela Mayer's coach "Al Michael" (pg. 113, but correctly written as "Al Mitchell" on pg. 43) and Jermain Taylor "Germaine" (pg. 75), are present. The occasional long-winded sentence crops up, an issue the author admits in the Acknowledgements. There is a slight New York bias, which makes sense considering the author is based in New York and trains at Gleason's Gym.

Though there is so much coherently-organized information, fans of Jewish boxing might be disappointed that Carolina Duer and Hagar Finer aren't in the book. Smith, who is Jewish, mentions promoters Aileen Eaton, Larry Goldberg, and Dmitriy Salita though. Incidentally Smith made a terrific list of the top five female Jewish boxers for The Jewish Boxing Blog last year.

In The Promise of Women's Boxing, Malissa Smith takes an extremely broad subject and manages to create an engaging, informative narrative that captures the climb of women's boxing. Smith is a founding board member of the IWBHF and a voter for the IBHOF, but at some point, she should be right there with the people she helps elect because of her contributions to boxing, this excellent book among them.