"Boxer now in fight of her life"

She's fifty years old. She's 5' 2", 125 lbs. It was her first professional match. Why was she in the ring with a much taller, much younger opponent?

After lasting 2 1/2 rounds in the fight at Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort in Canyonville on Thursday night, "Sweet Shampang," as she likes to be called, was still unconscious Friday night at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene after collapsing and then undergoing emergency surgery to relieve swelling in her brain about 1 a.m...

Shampang had suffered a hematoma, a clotting of the brain's blood vessels in the front of her brain, Angel said.

The article mentions that when Shampang started boxing two years ago, no one said she was "crazy." (Why isn't there another term for tragically poor judgment that leads to needless endangerment?) Women's boxing is surging in popularity, says the article, but there are problems:

Boxing commissions have made it easier for women with no professional experience to get licensed than for men who have fought amateur bouts for years, Triplett said in a Register-Guard article on Shampang earlier this year...

Miele and Dr. Julian Bailes, a professor and chairman of the department of neurological surgery at WVU's School of Medicine, wrote an article for The New York Times in May titled "Fatal Attraction for the Ring?" in which they described the increased risk women boxers face and how they are being rushed into professional bouts because of the novelty of it all...

Several factors contribute to boxing being far more dangerous for women than men, said Miele, including the smaller size of their necks, less muscle mass, lighter weights, less training and medical attention, and mismatches.

Because of their smaller numbers, it's more difficult to match female boxers, Miele said.