Helga Risoy, born and raised by her grandparents along with five uncles on an island in northern Norway. Her home was on a small island and her school on another island, requiring Helga to row to and from school every day.

When she was nine she became interested in kickboxing by watching it on television. She was not able to start training before 1977 when she moved to Oslo, Norway.  There was no issue for women to participate in Martial Arts and Kickboxing at the time, but the boxing gyms were strictly for men. Helga had a boxing trainer coming to the kickboxing gym to train her, and he finally invited her to his boxing gym as the first women to train there. She was not welcome in the beginning, but she sparred with the guys, and began to gain respect. After a while she invited more girls to the gym, and more and more women joined them. Soon after, the Boxing Association in Norway started to sanction fights for women.

In 1985, she achieved black belt in karate and in 1989, she became the Norwegian national champion in kickboxing. And ultimately, she became the World Champion in kickboxing in Berlin, 1991. During this time, she also competed as an amateur boxer winning the "Norway Box Cup" in 1988; and as a team captain and boxer, represented Norway in the first international competition held for women in Sweden in 1989.

Along with her boxing career, Helga was running her own advertising agency. From 1987-92 she was a board member in The Norwegian Amateur Boxing Association fighting for women's boxing. She was the only woman in the world to be a board member in an amateur boxing association. One of her tasks was editor, writer and photographer for the magazine BOXING.

Leaving Norway

The International Amateur Boxing Federation (AIBA) had a congress in Australia in 1991. This committee banned women from competing in amateur boxing internationally. This was a major setback for women boxing. Since professional boxing was not legal in Norway at the time, the only way Helga could continue boxing was to leave the country.

After moving to the U.S., Helga wound up in Los Angeles and started to train at her hero Benny The Jet's gym. A boxing trainer, Herchel Jacobs "adopted" her and she started to train professionally.

There were no women's boxing at all at the time in the U.S. For one year she had to network across the U.S. to find women boxers and promoters that were willing to put a bout together. Boxing promoters laughed at her, and people did not take her seriously.

Meeting Don King

Don King had a press conference in Los Angeles, and Helga went. She introduced herself as a professional boxer, and King smiled. He invited her to come to Las Vegas to meet him the following weekend. Helga rented a car, drove through the Mojave desert and went to the fights at the Mirage hotel where Julio Cesar Chavez  was the headliner. Don King and Helga were sitting privately, talking for two hours. She finally asked him, "Are you willing to put two of the best women's boxers on your card?". He sat quietly, thinking for a long time before he answered "Yes, I will do that, send me some tapes of your fights".

She never sent Don King the tapes, because right after that she got her first fight with Top Rank on March 4, 1993. This fight was held at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas on the undercard of Roger Mayweather vs Livingstone Bramble. Most people had never seen women boxing before so they were stunned and surprised. Helga moved to Las Vegas and continued to box. Her new trainer was Mario “Moe” Macias. She was also briefly trained by former Olympic coach Ken Adams, and at the end of her career she was trained by the legendary Emanuel Steward, and became the first woman to train at the famous Kronk Gym in Detroit.

Her third fight was shown on national television, and other promoters began to put women boxers on their cards. Don King kept his word and signed up Christy Martin, who was an exciting fighter to watch. Women boxing started to take off seriously.

Since Helga Risoy was one of the first women boxers in the new generation of women boxers she always had to prove to everyone that women also belonged in the sport of boxing. The Nevada State commissioner Marc Ratner said, "Helga Risoy was the first woman to fight in Las Vegas in almost twenty years, she is a true pioneer, she started it all".

She participated in the historic first professional boxing match for women in Mexico, December 12.1994. Also she went back to her Scandinavian roots, and fought the first professional women bout in Denmark, October 21. 1995. Helga was the first woman to box professionally in the North West US, Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation, Idaho, and in Mississippi, Bay St. Louis.

Hard road to go…