By: Ken Hissner
Women’s boxing seems to be coming to the forefront today. The two most interesting and successful in this writer’s opinion are Christina Hammer from KAZ fighting out of Germany currently in the US.
Hammer is 22-0 (10), and holds the WBC and WBO middleweight titles. She is to women’s boxing in Germany that Golovkin has been to men’s boxing and in the same weight-class.
Hammer will be defending against former champion Tori Nelson, 17-1-3 (2), of Auburn, VA, on June 22nd at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, VA. In January she lost for the first time to Olympic Gold Medalist Claressa Shields in a Super Middleweight title defense of her IBF and WBC titles.
Hammer has been a world champion since 2010 and has had a dozen successful title defenses. Only five of her twenty-two fights have been out of Germany and this will be her American debut coming up. With Gennady “GGG” Golvokin being the best in their country of KAZ she may be in his shadow but hands down she is the best female boxer and certainly one of the top boxers in the world today.
Welterweight IBF, IBO, WBA, WBC and WBO world champion Cecillia “First Lady” Braekhus, 32-0 (9), will be defending her titles as mentioned previously and will be fighting Kali “KO Mequinonoag” Reis, 13-6-1 (4), from Providence, RI, managed by Philadelphia’s Brian Cohen. She lost her WBC and WBO title in November of 2016 to Hammer which was their second meeting, but has won her last three fights.
Braekhus in her eleventh fight won the WBC and WBA titles defeating Vinni Skovgaard, then 7-0, of Denmark, in March of 2009. She has defended her titles twenty-three times. She added the vacant WBO title in 2010 and the IBF title in 2014.
Braekhus’ last four fights are in her now homeland of Norway being born in Colombia. Since winning a world title in 2009 she has defended her title ten times in Denmark. She has had three defenses in Germany where she won her first world title.
It was back in 2008 that Braekhus made her American debut so it’s now some ten years later she marks her return to America for a world title defense. She is very popular in Colombia and Norway let alone Denmark and Germany.
Braekhus has defended her title against three previously unbeaten challengers. In 2017 she had big wins over Klara Svensson, 17-1, and Erica Farias, 24-1. In 2013 she stopped veteran American Mia St. John. She has more defenses than any female boxer with the exception of Germany’s Regina Halmich and is looking to pass her in the future.
