Baumgardner vs Persoon headlines all-women’s boxing event

Alycia Baumgardner returns to action in September.

Alycia Baumgardner will defend her WBC super featherweight title against Delfine Persoon on Sept. 27 in Atlanta, headlining an all-women’s fight card broadcast on Brinx.TV and Fubo Sports.

The event is promised to be “groundbreaking” and “set in an immersive world environment,” which sounds like city-slickin’ techno-nonsense to me, but all the same there will be a fight card with boxing matches.

Baumgardner (15-1, 7 KO) was still the undisputed champion last we knew, also holding the WBA, IBF, and WBO titles, but those are not mentioned in the press release for the bout. The 30-year-old has not fought since July 2023 when she beat Christina Linardatou, after which she failed a drug test. She denied intentionally taking any banned substances.

The WBC “cleared” Baumgardner in January, at least of intentional usage of banned substances.

The 39-year-old Persoon (49-3, 19 KO) is best known for a pair of close, controversial losses to Katie Taylor in 2019-20, and is a former lightweight champion. She hasn’t done much of note since the second Taylor fight, but she’s had a good career and is still a contender at 130.

The fights will be broadcast free, which is cool, and if we’re all being real, this is right about the standard for dealing with doping issues in the sport, no matter who yells about it and how loudly they proclaim they’re very serious about consequences. You really have to fail repeatedly for anyone to actually do much of anything about it, and Baumgardner’s been sat a year now, so she’s back in business.