Nicola Adams will join an increasingly illustrious group of female professional boxers when she makes her debut in Manchester in April.
Here Press Association Sport picks out a number of trailblazers in the women's sport whom Adams will be hoping to emulate.
BARBARA BUTTRICK: Considered a women's boxing pioneer, Yorkshire-born Buttrick worked her way up from carnival booths and moved to America where she reigned as world flyweight and bantamweight champion in the 1950s and 1960s.
CHRISTY MARTIN: The so-called "Coal Miner's Daughter" from West Virginia, Martin found fame when she signed for Don King and fought on a series of Las Vegas pay-per-view bills in the 1990s, winning the WBC super-welterweight title.
LAILA ALI: The daughter of Muhammad Ali won world titles at multiple weights and famously recreated one of her father's greatest rivalries when she fought and beat Jacqui Frazier-Lyde in the first pay-per-view card headlined by women in Las Vegas in 2001.
JANE COUCH: The "Fleetwood Assassin" fought and won a high-profile legal battle to become the first female boxer licensed by the British Boxing Board of Control in 1998, going on to win the light-welterweight world title.
TONYA HARDING: The disgraced former ice skater had seven professional fights in 2003 and 2004, including on a Mike Tyson undercard. After three losses and with crowds regularly cheering against her, she retired.
KATIE TAYLOR: The Ireland superstar turned professional in November after winning five world amateur titles but failing to defend her Olympic crown in Rio. She has won both paid bouts to date and will next appear on the Anthony Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko undercard.
CLARESSA SHIELDS: Like Adams a two-time Olympic champion, Shields, whose only amateur defeat came against Great Britain's Savannah Marshall, turned professional in November with a points win over Franchon Crews in Las Vegas.
Source: PA
