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On 20 August at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum convention centre in Biloxi, Mississippi, Wolfe will fight her first male opponent for a purse of $100,000 (£55,000). The fight is to be shown live throughout America and will, she hopes, give momentum to a stalled career. She and her manager plan to select a man who is of equal weight and similar style to her 162lb and 5ft 9in, with a solid record. Neither fighter will wear a headguard, though Wolfe will have a chest-protector under her Lycra top - the standard plate that all women boxers wear. 'I want a guy who will box me as a fighter, not as a woman,' she tells me at the Ann Wolfe Gym in the troubled suburb of Manor on the north-eastern outskirts of Austin, Texas. 'The people who come along and those who watch it on pay-per-view will get their money's worth. I need a chance to show my skills, to show the world what I can really do. This won't be no sideshow.'
She has support from boxing officials. John Lewis, Mississippi Athletic Commission chairman and himself a former fighter, has sparred with Wolfe and is impressed. 'She's a top-ranked fighter, if not the best [woman] in the world. She's someone we feel safe with doing this [fighting a man]. She probably could win against a man. She's that tough.'

Born on 17 January 1971, Wolfe grew up in poverty in Oberlin in rural Louisiana. As a child, she hauled buckets of water and piles of firewood because the family home - 'basically a shack on the bayou' - had no running water or heating. She had one pair of shoes and left school, at the age of 11, to find work. Her parents died when she was in her late teens: her mother, a strict Methodist, from cancer, while her father, like one of her brothers, was murdered. At different times, she has been homeless as well as in prison for dealing dope and crack. 'My mother was an angel, my father was the devil,' she says. 'I sat in prison and thought, "This is not what my mother would have wanted".'

Wolfe moved to Austin to escape 'all the bad people I hung out with in Louisiana', where she would beat people up if they owed her money for drugs. But once in Texas she could find nowhere to live. She and her two young daughters lived together under a tree, scrambling for survival. 'I would offer to sweep the Burger King car park if the staff would give my kids breakfast,' she recalls.

One afternoon nine years ago, she wandered into the Montopolis boxing gym in Austin, saw the guys sparring and thought: 'I can do that.' There she met the respected amateur coach Don 'Pops' Billingsley. She has worked with him ever since, turning professional in October 1998.

In person, she is gentle, candid and softly spoken. She has become an inspiration to the youngsters, both boys and girls, who gather at her gym to train and spar. Yet when she puts on the gloves, Wolfe is transformed. 'To face her in the ring is seriously intimidating,' says boxer Cassandra Geiggar, from Arkansas. 'She has so much power and so much raw talent. Every time she fights she whoops them a new ass.'