Couch calls time on boxing career

Fleetwood-born Couch was awarded an MBE in 2007

Women's boxing legend Jane Couch has announced her retirement from the ring.

A five-time world champion, Couch, 40, won 28 of her 39 fights in a 15-year career and is hanging up her gloves to focus on her work as a boxing promoter.

Known as 'The Fleetwood Assassin', Couch has been based in Bristol since 1993 and was awarded an MBE in 2007.

She has only been allowed to fight in the UK since March 1998 when she won a sexual discrimination claim against the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC).

Couch won the first BBBC-sanctioned women's contest in November of that year with a technical knockout against Germany's Simona Lukic in Streatham, London.

The Lancashire-born fighter's first major success had come in 1996 when she out-pointed France's Sandra Geiger to win the WIBF welterweight title.

Couch's last fight was against another Frenchwoman, Anne-Sophie Mathis, in December 2007 - which she lost on a technical knockout.