LAS VEGAS, Nevada, January 15, 2010 (AFP) - Boxing trainer Roger Mayweather, uncle of fighter Floyd Mayweather jnr, was bound over for trial Friday on felony charges alleging he beat and choked a woman boxer.

The confrontation on August 2 occurred at an apartment owned by Roger Mayweather.

The woman, 26-year-old Melissa St. Vil, was the only person to testify at an evidentiary hearing on Friday, after which Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Pro-Tem

James Gubler decided there was enough evidence to try Mayweather on coercion, battery-strangulation and battery causing substantial bodily harm charges.

If convicted of all counts, Mayweather could face three to 16 years in prison.

Gubler set arraignment for January 26 in Clark County District Court.

Mayweather's attorney Jack Buchanan said Mayweather will plead not guilty and challenge the charges against him.

On Friday, St. Vil pointed to Mayweather and said "He did this to me," referring to four photographs taken at a hospital in the wake of the scuffle that showed injuries to her neck, face and head.

Mayweather, himself a former fighter, did not testify at the hearing. He remains free on $13,000 bail.

Mayweather once trained St. Vil, and he owned the apartment where she lived with Mayweather's tenant, Cornelius Lott.

St. Vil said that Mayweather was angry that she was in the apartment when he arrived looking for Lott.

St. Vil said she called the police and hit Mayweather with a lamp. Before officers arrived, she said, Mayweather grabbed her neck from behind and choked her until she couldn't breathe.

Written police reports said officers found the front door open and saw Mayweather behind St. Vil in the kitchen with his arms around her as she struggled to get away.

Police reported Mayweather had injuries on the head and the side of his face, and his lawyers said they were from punches thrown by St. Vil.

Buchanan said he'll show at the trial that St. Vil started the altercation, and that she has given conflicting accounts of the incident, which she hoped to use to obtain a civil financial settlement.