WASHINGTON, D.C.---Washington, DC's own Lisa "Too Fierce" Foster has won the IFBA Women's Junior Featherweight Championship, the culmination of five long, hard, often lonely years of training and fighting. Here is what one observer wrote about Lisa's win:

"A standing room only crowd at the Treasure Chest Casino in Kenner, Louisiana was treated to an exciting night of women's boxing. In the main event, Lisa Foster of Washington, DC scored a stunning KO over Kathy Williams of Thunder Bay, Canada in the 9th round, to win the IFBA Jr. Featherweight Title. Foster dominated the fight from the opening bell, knocking Williams down in the first round. "

Williams, a former IBA Junior Bantamweight Champion and now a police officer, had an amateur record of 25-6-0 and a professional record of 13-3-0 with four of the wins via knockout. The fight occurred May 15, 2002 at the Treasure Chest Casino in Kenner, Louisiana, near New Orleans. Grammy Award winner Aaron Neville sang the national anthem at the beginning of the fight.

The fight proved to be a ratings winner for Fox SportsNet, scoring a solid 1.0 rating even with strong competition from the NBA Western Conference Finals, The Preakness and PGA Golf. Building upon the rating success of IFBA Boxing over the years on ESPN2, USA Network, various Fox Sports Regional Networks and pay-per-view, the IFBA once again proved that women's boxing delivers a strong audience. During and immediately following the telecast, the IFBA received a 380% increase in traffic on its web site www.ifba.com, where fans can find all the latest news on the IFBA 24 hours a day.

Before the fight, the IFBA said "the Foster versus Williams bout will feature two of the finest women boxers in the Jr. Featherweight division today. These world class fighters have fought over 30 professional bouts combined and now they will meet for the honor of becoming the IFBA Jr. Featherweight Champion of the World."

Foster, 34, is a busy woman. She owns Too Fierce Boxing & Fitness at 5517 Colorado Avenue, NW in Washington, DC, where she conducts classes in boxing, body sculpting, and cardio kickboxing. An accomplished and in-demand personal trainer, her clients are primarily professional women. The gym is also the site of a summer program for children, run personally by Lisa.

She has recently had great success as a promoter of amateur boxing events.

She is a USA Boxing-certified coach, referee, and judge, and a wife and mother of a boy and a girl - Gerald and Taylor.

" My kids are my life. They train at my gym three days a week. They've both trained to box since they were three, and they both want to compete. But that's totally up to them," she emphasized. "I refuse to be one of those parents who press their children into doing something the kids might not want to do."

Growing up, Lisa, the youngest of five, and the only girl, lived in eleven foster homes in the DC area.

She idolized Muhammad Ali and a lot of the legendary fighter has rubbed off on her. She is what observers of the sport call a "pure boxer" who uses her natural mobility to her advantage.

"I always watched 'The Greatest.' I loved his style, his timing. I enjoyed mimicking his moves," she said.

She competed in karate and kung fu in her mid-twenties, but she wanted to compete in a sport that had more contact. After watching a fight in 1997 featuring well-known female boxer Christy Martin, she found her calling. All she needed was a gym in which to work out and to be trained.

After three months of trying, often being refused permission to train to box because, she was told, boxing was "not for women," she found a gym in midtown Washington, DC. Nine months later she had the first of her two amateur fights. Her second fight got her into the quarter-finals of the 1998 Women's National Championships.

Lisa turned pro after that fight. She has a professional record of four wins, three losses, and one draw. One of the wins came by knockout. All of her fights have come against much more experienced fighters. In many cases, she had been booked as an "opponent," a fighter expected to give the "name fighter" a good fight, but, ultimately, to lose. But, Lisa didn't follow the script.

She admits that she was badly managed, and, at times, badly trained early in her career.

"I have had several trainers who have tried to change my style. I'm pretty sure that is the reason for at least one of my losses. I vowed to myself that I would never lose that part of myself again," she said. "One trainer tried to change my whole style of boxing. I started to hate the thing I once loved. But my current trainer encouraged me to do my own thing and enjoy myself and that is exactly what I have been doing."

Lisa fights as a bantamweight (up to 118 pounds) and as a Junior Featherweight/Super Bantamweight (up to 122 pounds). Lisa has fought in New York City; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Baltimore; Las Vegas; Tunica, Mississippi; Davie, Florida; Wilmington, Delaware, and New Orleans.

In the Wilmington fight, which went the six round distance, in September 2001, Lisa beat Lakeysha Williams in what Fightnews.com called "a well-deserved split decision." Of Lisa's performance, the influential website said she "displayed her superior boxing ability," and "boxed beautifully, circling and landing her long left jab."

"Foster," wrote Fightnews.com, "had Williams out of her counterpunching style...(and) suddenly crashed a right hand on Williams, dropping her fairly hard. This was a solid knockdown." Earlier in the fight, Lisa was hit by her opponent twice while she was down, which resulted in Williams losing a point. Said Fightnews.com of the incident, "Foster overcame it, waving off her corner's concerns, and came back to floor her opponent."

While Williams was ranked number eight in the world, Lisa had not recently been ranked by the major sanctioning bodies, a consequence of her low profile in the world of women's boxing, rather than a judgment of her boxing ability. Previously, even with just a few fights under her belt, she had been ranked as a top ten bantamweight by the major sanctioning bodies. The Delaware win marked the end of the "preparatory phase" of Lisa's boxing career, and the end of her low profile.

In May, after a long five years, Lisa is headlined an internationally televised card. The bout aired on FoxSportsNet in the US.

Lisa has been the subject of more than a dozen newspaper feature stories and was featured in the Discovery Channel documentary "Women in the Ring." She appears frequently on local television and radio programs and will soon be featured in "Sister 2 Sister Magazine," a national publication. She is the featured boxer on www.babesofboxing.com. She has the support, encouragement, and endorsement of Jacqui "Sister Smoke" Frazier-Lyde, a fighter, and the daughter of the legendary Joe Frazier. Lisa is sponsored by, and is the celebrity endorser of and official spokeswoman for, the Biochoice line of nutritional supplements and has her own "Too Fierce" line of boxing gear and fitness wear.

Beautiful, buff, ripped, and with abs of steel, the charismatic and dynamic Lisa "Too Fierce" Foster is upbeat, always-positive, and energetic. Combine those attributes with her ever-ready smile and her world-class boxing abilities and you have a great representative of and ambassador for women's boxing.

Her goal is simple: She intends to hold more championships of more sanctioning bodies in more weight classes than any other female fighter.

"I will make a mark in this sport for all women to be proud of. Out of the ring I will always be attached to boxing in some way, with my gym, management, and promotion. I would also like to do some stand-up comedy and act, and I want to write a book on my journey through foster care and my life in boxing."