The 3-minute round debate has been a hot topic in and around women’s boxing for decades, with participants, enthusiasts, and critics alike passionately giving voice to their opinions both for and against. Same goes for the question of whether women’s championship matches should be scheduled for twelve rounds, same as men since 15-rounders were done away with in 1987, rather than the long-imposed duration of ten.
Undisputed featherweight champion Amanda Serrano, a seven-division titleholder and one of the top three best pound-for-pound female fighters today, has been one of the more outspoken advocates for the lifting of such prejudicial restrictions in recent years. If you recall, she swiftly blindsided Katie Taylor with a challenge to fight twelve three-minute rounds in last April’s Madison Square Garden main event at the kickoff press conference.
Katie politely declined. Not because she is averse to the concept on general principle but because the contract had already been signed and its terms, including the standard ten two-minute rounds for women’s title fights, agreed to. Not to mention the WBC wouldn’t have had any part of it. We’ll probe into that sore subject much more soon enough.
For now, the main headline is that Serrano has found a willing dance partner to go the twelve three-minute-round distance with her in Danila Ramos. This will be the third bout apiece in 2023 for both combatants. Serrano made the fight announcement on social media just one month removed from having beaten Heather Hardy in her first defense as Undisputed featherweight champion after first taking the WBA title by force from Erika Cruz back in February.
The 12-2 Ramos, a 38-year-old Brazilian who resides in Argentina, has rebounded nicely from a 2019 split decision loss to former world title challenger Katharina Thanderz by winning four straight fights. This year’s victories have been a unanimous decision against Julia Gabriela Celes for the South American featherweight championship and a split verdict over Brenda Karen Carbajal just three weeks ago to earn the interim WBO title and become their top contender to Serrano’s throne.
“Danila Ramos may be my WBO mandatory challenger, but when we step in the ring, she will understand exactly why I am the Undisputed featherweight champion,” Serrano said in a press release. “But this fight is about more than some belts. We have faced a long and hard battle, united as women, to achieve the same pay, respect, and recognition in boxing. Together, on Friday, October 27, we will make history and prove to the world once again, how incredible women’s boxing is and that we are just as tough, dynamic, and capable as any man in the ring, if not more so. This is a fight for women everywhere to be treated the same as their male counterparts.”
Ramos is enthusiastically up to the challenge. “Fighting Amanda Serrano for twelve three-minute rounds for a unified championship is set to break the barriers that we women have been looking to do for many years,” she stated. “We will go down in history and in the books. It will be a fight of two women warriors! I am preparing like never before for this fight and will proudly represent Brazil as we battle in Orlando, Florida and I look to bring all the belts home.”
If you pay close enough attention to Ramos’ remarks and give more than a cursory glance at the fight poster, the other major aspect to this fight, besides the 12x3 format, that is impossible to ignore is that it is being billed as a “unified championship” match, and not Undisputed. If you’re curious as to why, we have the WBC to thank for that. In October 2014, the sanctioning body issued a statement based on an inquiry ordered by president Mauricio Sulaiman and the subsequent conclusions reached during its first World Female Convention. The report began with this bold summation: The WBC Will Not Participate in Any Female Bout Scheduled for 12 rounds x 3 Minutes. The supporting evidence of the committee’s judgment focused on women’s bone density, menstrual cycles, and stamina levels.
“They want to keep women in their place. Proof is in the actions, not some bullshit research,” Layla McCarter told me in 2016 when we discussed the issue for a feature-length story. “Science can be argued on any side your agenda calls for. I can get doctors that will argue contrary to the WBC doctor. Will it change their minds? The answer is no. Their minds were already set against.”
McCarter famously lobbied the Nevada State Athletic Commission to allow 3-minute rounds in 2006 and battled Belinda Laracuente for the GBU world lightweight title under the agreed-upon 10x3 guidelines on November 17 of that year in an instant classic at the Orleans Hotel and Casino. She beat Laracuente but McCarter’s fight wasn’t over yet.
“After I was able to convince the Nevada State Athletic Commission to allow three-minute rounds, I wrote to the president of the Association of Boxing Commissions, Mr. Tim Lueckenhoff, to request that he change the guidelines that most commissions in the USA and others abide by,” Layla continued. “The regulations stated essentially that male boxers should fight no more than twelve 3-minute rounds and that female boxers should fight no more than ten 2-minute rounds. He agreed that it should be leveled by stating that all boxers male and female should fight no more than twelve 3-minute rounds. He proposed the change and the board passed it. Now it's up to fighters to push their individual state commissions when they fight to allow three-minute rounds. They can no longer point to ABC guidelines to deny it.”
Making good on her crusade, McCarter defended her title twice in bouts scheduled for twelve three-minute rounds. Neither fight lasted until the final bell, however, as she stopped Donna Biggers in the second, which also won Layla the vacant WBA world lightweight title, and forced Melissa Hernandez to quit on her stool after eight brutal rounds.
More than twenty years before McCarter, Holly McDaniel broke the nose of ‘Darling’ Darlina Valdez in the eleventh round of their October 22, 1983 world bantamweight title fight in Santa Fe, New Mexico which ultimately saw Valdez crowned the new champion by unanimous decision at the conclusion of their fifteen-round scuffle. Yes, you read that right. Fifteen rounds. This was the first and only women’s 15x3 championship fight, but on March 24, 1986 in Denver, Colorado, Laurie Holt defeated Cora Webber over fifteen two-minute rounds in a world super-featherweight bout.
Thanks to the diligent twenty seven-year record-keeping campaign undertaken by pioneering prizefighter turned archivist Sue Fox, we know that the first-known fifteen-round non-title women’s contest occurred in 1981 when former lightweight champion Sue ‘KO’ Carlson fought Tammy Jensen and, true to her ring moniker, put Jensen down for the count in the third. Jackie Holley competed in a pair of fifteen-rounders in 1984, flipping the script on Sue Carlson by knocking her out in the sixth on February 17 and lasting the full distance with Cora Webber’s twin sister Dora in a losing effort six months later.
Which brings us full circle, back to Amanda Serrano and Danila Ramos pushing past present day boundaries and defying the so-called conventional wisdom arrived at by the likes of Mauricio Sulaiman who continues to defiantly protest that his goal is to “protect boxers from themselves.” There have even been rumblings that Sulaiman may see fit to punish the rebellious Serrano by stripping her of the green and gold belt.
It seems as if potentially relinquishing her status as Undisputed champion is a price Amanda Serrano is willing to pay for the sake of the greater good.
“This one is to show the world that anything a man can do, a woman can too,” Serrano posted on social media as a caption to the fight photo. “This one is to show we’re equal. This one is for boxing. Championship boxing. Orlando, Florida, I can’t wait to make history with you.”
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