The first women’s professional boxing match to take place in Saudi Arabia is set to happen on August 20th, between Somalian-British featherweight boxer, Ramla Ali and Dominican boxer, Crystal Nova.
Ali hopes the two of them will inspire Saudi women and girls to pursue boxing in a country that has only recently begun to allow females to compete in sports.
Saudi girls have only been allowed to take part in physical education lessons in schools since 2017 and in January 2018, were allowed to attend a football match for the first time.
In January 2018, national women’s teams were first established in a range of sports in the country. Since that time, Saudi female athletes have brought in more than 100 medals in regional and international events.
Ali says organisers of the boxing match invited her to compete, and she believes there’s a cultural shift happening in the region due to Saudi Arabia allowing this event to go forwards.
“We will cement our names and it will be forever, and I know along the way we’ll be inspiring so many young girls and women to not only take up the sport of boxing but take up sport in general.”
This isn’t the first time that Ali and Nova have put their names down in history. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, Ali became the first boxer to compete, and in October 2020, she became the first Somali boxer to go professional. She’s also the first Muslim woman to win a championship in Great Britain. And Ali’s opponent, Nova, is the former world title challenger.
Even though the two will be competing against one another, they both see this match as much more than just themselves.
“It’s a message to all young women that boxing is not only for men. Boxing is also for women and I can go far. And if I can go far, everybody, all the women in the world can learn boxing and can go far and go up in this game,” says Nova.
While the event offers representation for women in sport, Saudi Arabia’s poor Human Rights record and dismal treatment of women in Saudi society have created controversy. Some critics have accused the country of ‘sportwashing’, which is when a government tries to use sport to improve their tarnished reputation.
Amongst the criticism, both Ali and Nova have decided to go ahead with the fight and view it as an honour to be the first women to compete professionally in Saudi Arabia.
“I’m 100 per cent ready to put on a great performance on Saturday. I know my opponent is game and together we’re going to show women deserve to be on these big stages and we deserve to box in Saudi Arabia,” says Ali.
Alongside boxing, Ali is also a model and activist. She says women in boxing don’t receive much money so she funds her boxing career with modeling. She’s been featured in high profile magazines such as British Vogue, ELLE, Grazia and Wonderland.
As an activist, Ali works with The Sisters Club, a charitable initiative in the UK that teaches boxing to young Muslim women and provides rehabilitation and self-defense classes for victims of sexual abuse. And in her first year as a professional boxer, she donated 25 per cent of her earnings to Black Lives Matter.
The highly anticipated match between Ali and Nova is on the undercard of the Anthony Joshua-Oleksandr Usyk and will leave a lasting impact on the narrative for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and around the world.