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A first Man-woman bout cleared by state department
Posted: Thursday October 14, 1999 06:54 PM
BREMERTON, Washington (AP) -- Margaret McGregor was never like other girls. She bit off the feet on her sister's Barbie dolls. She loved football. Now, at age 36, she's still defying stereotypes. When her boxing trainer joked about McGregor fighting a man, she didn't laugh. "Why not?" she said. Others can think of reasons. They say she'll get hurt. They say it will detract from the growing sport of women's boxing. They say it's just plain wrong. But the Washington state Department of Licensing has accepted the match, and boxing promoters and officials are warily anticipating what they believe to be the first professional man-woman bout in the United States. If all goes as planned, McGregor, who stands 5-foot-5 (165 centimeters) and weighs 130 pounds (58.5 kilograms), will box four rounds Oct. 9 against Loi Chow of Vancouver, British Columbia, who's 5-2 (157 centimeters) and weighs 125 pounds (56 kilograms). Both will be paid $1,500, regardless of the outcome. "She really took offense to the fact that someone told her, `You can't do it,'" says McGregor's trainer, Vern Miller. "She doesn't want to have a little asterisk by her name saying, `She's just a girl.'" For most of her life, McGregor has tried to erase that asterisk. In school, she showed an aptitude for sports and not much else. She dropped out, later getting an equivalency degree, and worked a string of low-paying jobs. Nothing clicked until she walked into a martial-arts gym. "I fit," she says. Another event around the same time strengthened McGregor's determination to be a fighter -- the man she loved hit her. "I felt so violated and so helpless," she recalls. The anger came later -- "a burning anger." She vowed no one would get the upper hand on her again. McGregor got a black belt in karate, then earned an 8-0-1 record as a professional kick boxer. She started boxing about a year ago and turned pro in April, winning three bouts in quick succession. Chow, a jockey and weightlifter who has a 0-2 record, hasn't fought professionally in more than three years, but he says he's been training. "I predict this fight will be over within a minute. The first combination I land, the fight will be over," Chow said. He stepped in when the first choice, Hector Morales, dropped out. Morales gave no reasons, but previously said he was ashamed to tell his mother about fighting a woman. The state says it treated this match, an undercard bout, like any other. State law doesn't prohibit mixed-gender boxing. "The real question is, `Why wouldn't we approve it?'" said Geraldine Calvo, spokeswoman for the licensing department's boxing program. "If we feel it is a fair match, we go with it." Calvo says regulators evaluated McGregor and Chow based on weight, health, experience and skill. Because it's not a title fight, no women's or men's boxing association has to sanction the bout. Some boxing organizations would stop the fight if they could. "Dead set against it," says women's boxing promoter Rick Kulis, president of the Torrance, California-based International Female Boxers Association. He fears the spectacle of a woman fighting a man could set the sport back. "It doesn't prove anything," he says. "This is the sideshow."
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