Swedish boxing champion Mikaela Lauren has refused to defend her super welterweight world title unless organizers of her next bout dispense with a sexist tradition: half-naked women parading signs of the fight’s score between rounds.
Instead, she wants some hot guys.
“I refuse to have a ring girl walking around as a sexual object at a match where two girls are fighting. That would just be crazy. This show is on us girls, and then it’s only fair to have some male eye candy,” she told the Swedish Aftonbladet tabloid. “If all the guys have ring girls at their matches, then I as a girl should have ring boys. To me, this is obvious – otherwise it is discrimination.” She added that men appeared during her last several matches and she intends to have her way this time when she faces Croatian Ivana Habazin in Stockholm on April 23.
Lauren, 40, has won 26 out of her 29 professional boxing matches, according to The Local.
“Either the promoter finds a solution, or I’ll take care of it myself. It’s no problem finding a good-looking guy who could walk around there with the sign,” she said. “I think that’s only fair, and I’m sure it will give the women in the audience some pleasure as well,” she told World Boxing News.
‘’I respect Mikaela’s opinion,’’ the fight’s promoter, Nisse Sauerland, told the website. ‘’It is not something we had anticipated, however, we will now endeavor to find a number boy for her world title defense.’’