by Kadeem Simmonds

Kellie Maloney returned to boxing promotion yesterday by taking on two fighters and hopes she can open the door for more women to get involved in the sport.

Maloney is returning to a very successful career which saw Lennox Lewis, under Maloney’s tutelage, guided to world heavyweight titles in the 1990s.

Under her previous name Frank, she called time on a three-decade career in October 2013, handing back licences to the British Boxing Board of Control after growing disillusioned with the sport.

She unveiled her latest fighters, Gary Cornish, 28, from Inverness and Tony Jones, 23, from Telford, Shropshire, and likened the new experience to managing non-league football side Nuneaton.

Maloney said: “I had no intention of coming back into boxing, if I’m honest, but this young man (Jones) and his trainer turned up on my doorstep one Sunday morning saying: ‘We want to be managed by you.’

“If I put it in football terms, I’ve been the manager of Manchester United and now I’m going to start managing Nuneaton Borough because I’ve got to start at the bottom again and there’s no getting away from that.

“But I feel complete in myself, happy in myself and the one thing that was missing in my life was something I always enjoyed — and that was my love of boxing.

“I want to prove I’m capable of doing it all over again and, if I’m successful, maybe it will open the door for more women to come into boxing.

“The opportunity and personal challenge for me is very big.”

Some people have questioned Maloney’s decision to transition genders and say it is nothing more than a “marketing ploy,” to which she replied: “If the people who think that want to go through what I’ve been through they are welcome to try it and let them walk in my shoes and see how hard it is.

“If it was a marketing ploy I should be locked up in a lunatic asylum.”

She also answered questions about how she will handle any trash-talk that will be aimed at her when promoting her fighters.

“How will I deal with any trash talking that comes my way? Until that situation arises, I can’t really comment.

“But in the past, I’ve been guilty of encouraging boxers to trash-talk and if it sells tickets I might have to do it again.

“Fortunately, I never took myself too seriously and hopefully, as Kellie, I will take myself in the right direction again because boxing is a great sport and I want to put it back on terrestrial TV and the back pages.”