Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

Amateur boxing tournaments have certainly changed since I first become involved in the late 1980s.

I was ringside at his first grassroots boxing event in more than a decade, catching the action at the Tauranga Boxing Club tournament on Saturday.

Society attitudes have changed markedly, with smoking inside tournament venues now outlawed.

Another change is that coaches and their supporters no longer head for the nearest pub as soon as weigh-ins are completed, returning just before the fights kick-off.

However, the biggest transformation has come with women's involvement and participation in our sport.

Three decades ago, female involvement was mostly limited to being a supporter or providing sandwiches and cup of teas from the kitchen.

The catalyst for change came in the mid-1980s when women pushed for the right to box in the countries rings.

In 1987, Boxing New Zealand changed their rules to allow women to compete in amateur boxing competition, although it was a stuttering start, with few entering combat in the ring in the formative years.

No better example of the giant strides that female boxing has made, is the advance from just two women's title fights at the 1987 Taupo Nationals, to where more than a third of the competitors at the 2022 National Championships will contest the female age-group and senior women's titles.

The first World Women's Championships held in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the USA, during 2001, set the standard of the best women's boxers squaring-off in fistic competition to decide who could claim the title of world's best.

New Zealand Women's welterweight Melanie Horne wrote her name into Boxing New Zealand history, in returning home with a Bronze Medal after reaching the tournament semi-finals. Melanie joined David Tua (Bronze Medal, Sydney 1992), as the only Kiwi's to win World Championship medals.

While AIBA Women's World Championships are held on a two years cycle, admittance to Olympic competition, didn't occur until the 2012 London Olympics.

New Zealand lightweight Alexis Pritchard grabbed her piece of BNZ history, becoming just the fourth Kiwi boxer to reach the Olympic quarterfinals.

Coaching has opened a draw of opportunity for women with a number taking up the reins as head coaches in the country's boxing gymnasiums.

There is no better example than Naomi Eunsom (née Alexander) who, after a successful boxing career is now in charge of the Napier Boxing Club, with her team taking home two victories from the Tauranga tournament.

Women have joined the referee's and judges ranks in ever increasing numbers.

Auckland R&J, Ina Schuster, broke new ground in receiving IBA International certification in officiating at the 2019 South Pacific Games.

The only area of concern for this writer, is the adjudicating of bouts, which have gone full circle in the last three decades.

The writing of a bouts result on a card was superseded by the introduction of several generations of computer generated scoring.

Computer scoring was supposed to eliminate cheating, however, the Professor McLaren report into boxing officials' dishonesty at the 2016 Rio Olympics, revealed sustained cheating.

We are now back where we were thirty years ago with judges writing down their score after each round.

Amateur boxing in the country has become much more inclusive over the last 30 years, with the progression of women in our sport producing better rounded athletes.