Unless you wanted to do it topless in some businessman’s apartment, the opportunities for female boxers in the early 1970s were limited at best. Sky’s new documentary, Right to Fight, written and directed by Georgina Cammalleri – and drawing on the research and archive of the former boxer Sue “Tiger Lilly” Fox – is the story of the women who changed the sport.
It is not a tale that has been told before. Fox has spent years painstakingly gathering scraps of evidence to form a coherent whole – since male historians of the sport have concentrated entirely on preserving the male record of what is perhaps the sport most dominated by men. Right to Fight tells it brilliantly, helped by the fact that every one of its subjects bursts with the kind of energy and charisma that is a gift to the camera. They have backstories, anecdotes and attitude that could fill a programme 10 times as long without it flagging for a moment.
