As women win Round One in the battle to box, we meet the girl who's a champ in the beauty, brains and brawn stakes.

She's billed as "The Coalminer's Daughter" and she's a knock-out.

Away from the fight game, Christy Martin looks, and dresses, like a fashion model.

But it's not her knock-out figure that has taken her a long way from her country home in West Virginia. It's her knock-out punch.

Christy has established herself as the world's No 1 since the Women's International Boxing Federation was formed three years ago.

And she'll no doubt become the inspiration for girls donning the gloves in the wake of the English Amateur Boxing Association's controversial decision last week to permit women's fights.

They couldn't have a better role model.

In the ring, Christy shows off her curves in shocking-pink trunks, skimpy white singlet, "Hot Cinnamon" lipstick, black eye-liner and flying, curly locks.

But it's her punching power, never seen before in a woman, that hass floored the fight world.

Her opponents tumble like ninepins under a ferocious assault from fists that seem hewn out of the coalface her father works.

It wasn't long before her exploits caught the attention of the controversial king- of-the-boxing heap, Don King himself.

He eyed up her feminine looks and ferocious right hook - and signed her up.

Amazingly - for a gal who packs such a punch - she stands only 5ft 4in and weighs in at a skinny nine-and-a-half stone.

The idea of being able to promote her as The Coalminer's Daughter - both her grand- fathers worked at the coalface, as do her father, an uncle and a brother - also caught King's imagination.

And now 28-year-old Christy is a fixture on any Mike Tyson card.

"I open the show, he closes it," she said before his shock defeat by Evander Holyfield.

But as well as brawn and beauty, Christy has brains. She works as a supply teacher and only took up fighting to boost her modest salary.

Her take-home purse in her last fight - on the Holyfield-Tyson bill - was pounds 50,000. Not much compared to Tyson's pounds 10 million, but more than she could earn in a year at the chalkface. Christy's bout was a huge draw. And according to the boxing writers, the finest show of technically correct boxing that night.

Her purist style, plus a killer hook and cutting jab, has made her a winner - 34 fights, 33 wins, 24 from knock-outs.

Christy has been helped enormously by being able to do something outside the ring that she's not allowed to do in it - fight a man.

Her sparring partner is Jimmy Maloney. "She's awesome," he raves. "She could flatten half the male lightweights out there."

Tyson is also unstinting in his praise. "She's the best girl I've seen - she knows how to fight."

Even the renowned veteran Las Vegas gym owner Johnny Tocco, famed for his grumpy put- downs, has admitted that Christy is good for boxing.

The 85-year-old Tocco, watching her train in his formerly men-only gym, was heard muttering: "It don't get any better than this."

Christy's husband, a former light-weight champ turned trainer, agrees. It took some time to convince him. Jim Martin was aghast when she walked into his gym in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1991.

No matter how much the boxing world was changing, females did not fit into his agenda.

He decided to arrange for her to get a couple of broken ribs. Then she'd clear off and he'd be rid of her.

Instead he was impressed by her raw talent. He decided to fix her up with some fights - plus make a bit of money. Then he fell in love with her. They ignored the 25-year age gap and married within the year.

"I never thought I'd kiss one of my fighters," Jim laughs.

"When she walked into the gym that first day and said she wanted to box I was floored," he recalls. "She wasn't wearing combat boots, she didn't look butch. She wasn't a manly type of woman."

Christy began boxing for a dare. A useful college basketball player, she was goaded by friends into entering a "Tough- woman" boxing contest" in her home town of Mullens, West Virginia, in 1987. Despite never having worn boxing gloves before she walked off with the pounds 700 purse.

She went on to to win the contest every year she was at college. When she graduated, with a degree in education, she never gave boxing another thought.

A call from a local promoter, asking her to fill as "cannon fodder" for one of his women fighters, took her back to the ring.

She thought it would be a one-off bout. But when she fought a draw against an opponent who should have flattened her within a couple of rounds, her enthusiasm was roused. She put her teaching career on hold and headed off to the boxing gym - and headline fame.

America's top sports magazine, Sports Illustrated, summed up the way boxing fans reluctantly accepted the sight of Christy gracing the biggest world title bills in recent ring history.

Marking her limelight debut, when she fought on the Mike Tyson-Frank Bruno card, the magazine wrote: "No doubt some people were repulsed by the sight. But many more were probably happy about seeing a good athletic performance."

What the curious are now discovering is that Christy isn't interested in furthering women's boxing as such. She'll only take on women who are as good as the males.

The Women's International Boxing Federation now has 1,000 member associations around the world, promoting female fights.

Unlike the early 90s when Christy started out, there isn't a big boxing gym in America that doesn't have a roster of women in serious training.

Then last year a 69-year boxing barrier was smashed. The legendary New York Golden Gloves competition - where the finest young boxers take their first steps to fame - included a category for women.

But Christy still stays away from all-female cards. "I would never fight on one of those," she says. "They seem too much like a sex thing. I get into the ring to promote Christy Martin, not women's boxing.

"Women athletes have such a difficult stereotype to overcome. Boxing is a particularly tough world for a woman, no matter how good you are."

Who's gonna argue?