BBC to screen women's boxing

Women's competitive boxing will be shown live on the BBC for the first time next month, the corporation announced today.

Viewers will be able to watch bouts from the GB Amateur Boxing Championships in Liverpool.

BBC Olympic sports editor Claire Stocks said: "We hope that sports fans will enjoy the chance to watch live amateur boxing on the BBC and get behind our Olympic hopefuls.

"The depth of talent amongst the men - who won 11 medals at the Commonwealth Games, including three golds for England's Simon Vallily and Tom Stalker and Scotland's Callum Johnson, as well as five medals at the recent European Championships, and the promise of our women, two of whom won silver medals at the Women's World Championships in June - bodes well for the 2012 Olympics and beyond."

Women's boxing was only recognised in this country after one of its most prominent names, Jane Couch, launched a sexual discrimination claim against the British Boxing Board of Control for the right to fight in the UK.

The board granted her a licence and she went on to win the first professional women's boxing bout in Britain in November 1998.

Couch, from Fleetwood in Lancashire, was made an MBE in 2007.