(JUNE 1) By her own admission, Jasmin Oflas can't cook : but she can fight. Having donned her first pair of boxing gloves at the age of four, the young woman from Berlin has dreamed all her life of becoming a professional boxer.

"Boxing is many-facetted," she says: "It depends on conditioning, concentration, strength and fitness. It's also very fair : apart from the referee, there's no one in the ring except you and your opponent, and it's a question of proving, within the rules, which of the two of you is the better. It's also a trial of strength : an ordeal in which you can be pushed to the very limit and find out what you are capable of."

Now twenty-two, Oflas's development has been retarded by an injury to her foot that required surgical intervention and kept her out of action for many months. When she resumed, she was invited in December 2005 to spar with Laila Ali, then in Berlin preparing for her fight with Asa Sandell, and acquitted herself so favourably that Paddy Fitzpatrick, now chief boxing coach of Elite Box Promotion, invited her to a trial in Hennigsdorf. Jasmin seized the opportunity with both hands and became the first female to sign for Elite.

Comparing her game today with that which took her to the Berlin amateur championship back in 2002, Oflas says: "I'm much more mobile and faster than before. I also have a better eye for the situation. My overall style hasn't changed that much, but my weight of punch has increased enormously."

The person best placed to take the measure of Oflas's punching power will be Miroslava Durinova, whom Oflas faces in her professional debut over four rounds at junior middleweight tomorrow evening in the Blue Box, Potsdam. Durinova, who is one year younger than Oflas, has already fought two four-rounders as a professional, losing the first and winning the second, each time on points.

(Source: www.eliteboxing.de)