Before I’d seen any women’s boxing, I assumed that they’d fight like lightweight men — fast, technical, but not necessarily powerful. Then I saw a women’s match, and it was a complete and utter brawl. A few more women’s matches, by top-ranked fighters, confirmed the trend.
In Battered Women, Benjamin Wallace-Wells notes the same phenomenon:
The worst male fighters know how to play defense, but these girls looked like they’d never been trained. They didn’t even try to protect themselves. There was no effort to dodge, no shifting of weight, no clever, calculated movement of feet. Both girls just kept charging, swinging both fists at the same time. It was like watching six-year-olds fight before they’re old enough to realize that they might be hurt: All you want to do is make it stop. The action in the middle of the ring was an inchoate tangle of limbs and fists. Thirty seconds into the whirling, Angie fell down, striking the mat violently, as if she was attacking it. Jessica waved her arms above her head chaotically — a caricatured Rocky gesture — a huge grin on her face. I thought to myself that these two must be the worst girl fighters in the world. But it turned out that six months earlier, Jessica had placed second in her weight class at the National Golden Gloves — this was as good as it got. [...] I’ve been to more than a dozen women’s fights since that first one, and nearly all were just like it, 45-second bloodfests.