Dara Torres thought her first boxing match would be fun.
Women don’t hit too hard, she believed, and boxing gloves are soft.
That mindset quickly changed after a punch from her sparring partner.
“I got hit so hard on the side of my mouth that I couldn’t close my jaw for three or four days,” Torres said in a recent telephone interview.
Torres, 49, is scheduled to make her boxing debut in an event for Haymakers for Hope billed as “Belles of the Brawl” on Wednesday in Boston. She has raised more than $18,000 of her $20,000 goal to fight cancer after losing her father, Edward, to colon cancer (donate here).