She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  The 2012 London Olympics generated great excitement as women prepared to step into the ring for the first time. Marlen Esparza signed a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics and was featured in a commercial that aired during the Games. She also received a bronze medal, as did Chungneijang MeryKom Hmangte of Indonesia in the women’s flyweight division. In the final, gold medalist Nicola Adams of Great Britain defeated silver medalist Cancan Ren of China. Katie Taylor of Ireland, who declared that she would never wear a miniskirt, earned gold in the female lightweight division, and in the women’s middleweight division, seventeen-year-old Claressa Shields of the United States earned gold by defeating Russia’s silver medalist, Nadezda Torlopova. Women’s boxing established a strong profile that would help it grow in popularity and authority for future fighters.

  Wrestling in the Modern Era

  By the 1960s, wrestling had begun to diverge into two distinct camps: “professional” wrestling for entertainment, and sport wrestling, primarily practiced in high schools and colleges. The “professional” style of wrestling simply meant that wrestlers earned money, but the fights were more theatrical than the matches seen in high school gyms. The entertainment style of wrestling may have primarily been a spectacle, although less so than today’s professional wrestling, but practitioners still needed skill and strength to perform. Sport wrestling, also known as scholastic wrestling because it is chiefly practiced in schools, became more popular in the 1970s, with isolated instances of girls participating on boy’s teams.

  Even with the passage of Title IX, girls had to fight for access to wrestling teams in high schools, and some still seek that right today in the private and religious school sectors. The popularity of professional or entertainment-style wrestling increased in the late twentieth century, as large television promotions were featured on major cable networks. In the world of sport wrestling, two types dominated: freestyle and Greco-Roman. Women typically compete in freestyle wrestling, and, in 2004, women’s wrestling became part of the Olympics. But prior to the Olympics, female wrestlers, like female boxers, had to push for the right to compete at the national and international levels.

  Jerry Hunter was not the only woman to fight a legal battle to wrestle. In both 1987 and 1996, two high school students brought lawsuits against their school districts for refusing to allow them to wrestle on the all-boy teams. The courts ruled in the girls’ favor in both instances. In the 1996 case, the court agreed that Tiffany Adams, the plaintiff, could wrestle on the team because “wrestling is an athletic activity and not a sexual activity.”[76]

  In 1987, Norway hosted the first all-woman wrestling tournament, and the United States sent no competitors. Three years later, the United States hosted its own national championships in San Francisco, although American women still had to pay their own way to compete internationally. USA Wrestling did not support women in 1991, so female wrestlers founded their own group, the U.S. Women’s Amateur Wrestling Federation, to help support women competing at the national and international levels.[77] Finally, in 1995, USA Wrestling, the national organization in charge of the American Olympic wrestling team, sponsored the U.S. women’s national team.

  Although women could not yet compete in the Olympics, USA Wrestling saw the benefit of maintaining a team of women that was competitive on the world stage. Shannon Williams, a former high school cheerleader, started competing in 1989, amongst only a dozen women, but by 1995, more than 150 women showed up to compete for a spot on the national team.[78] In an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Williams correctly asserts that women’s wrestling would be an Olympic sport within ten years. One of the headings of the article explains that, “it’s no longer uncommon to see young girls compete” in wrestling.[79] In 1995, one coach explained, it was standard to see at least ten or fifteen girls for every four hundred boys at a wrestling tournament. The women on the U.S. national team were unquestionably products of Title IX, and while many schools reinforced the ban against girls in contact sports, some programs did not. The international wrestling community also supported the growth of women’s wrestling; the Women’s World Championship tournament was held in Moscow in 1995; however, many of these events continued to treat women differently than male competitors. The 2000 World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, presented an award to the most beautiful female wrestler. The woman refused to accept her “award,” and the promoters ceased attempting to present this ignominious honor.[80]

  Female wrestling initially gained wider cultural acceptance than boxing, perhaps because boxing already had a connotation of violence. Women participated in wrestling tournaments globally, and, in 2004, women’s freestyle wrestling became an official sport in the Olympic Games in Athens. Sara McMann, future Ultimate Fighting Championship MMA fighter, earned a silver medal and was one of many women who participated in the first Olympic Games to include women’s wrestling. Women continued to participate in the Olympics, although they received little media coverage. Nonetheless, it is not just female wrestlers who are ignored by the Olympic media. In 2012, the IOC decided to remove wrestling of all kinds from the Olympic roster. The enormous backlash and subsequent support for the sport persuaded the committee to rescind its decision, but whether that means wrestling will receive more media coverage in the future is unclear. Luckily, there are numerous prestigious competitions held worldwide for elite wrestlers of both sexes.

  Judo

  Judo was the first fighting sport to include women in Olympic competitions. In 1992, female judo practitioners, referred to as judokas, competed in the Barcelona Olympic Games. The male and female divisions both consist of six weight-classes, and each class secures four medalists: one gold, one silver, and two bronze winners, due to the bracketing format. Other combat Olympic sports also follow this medaling format. As is mentioned in the introduction, judo has long been a popular martial art in the Western world.

  Arguably, the most influential female judo practitioner in history is Rusty Stewart, who, in 1955, learned judo in New York City. She began to teach at the local YMCA and trained with a group of forty men. In 1956, when the team was invited to the state championship, Stewart passed herself off as a man by binding her breasts and wearing her hair short. She made it all the way to the finals, but when an official discovered she was a woman, he threatened to disqualify the entire team unless she returned her well-earned medal. In 1963, fifty-five women competed in the first women-only judo competition in New York City, at the instigation of Stewart. Stewart had recently returned from Japan, where she had obtained a second-degree black belt. It would be nearly a decade before the first national judo competition for women would occur in the United States, but judo was more accepting of female athletes than most combative sports in the 1970s.

  Throughout the years, women have had a prominent role in judo as it has been practiced and contested in numerous countries. Female judo players have regularly participated in prominent events and tournaments. In 1992, women’s judo was added to the Olympics, held in Barcelona. The most famous Olympic judo player in the United States is undoubtedly Ronda Rousey, who has become the most famous female MMA fighter in the world. As a martial artist, Rousey has followed in her mother’s footsteps. AnnaMaria Waddell won first place in the 1984 World Judo Championships, making her the first American to win gold in that event. Rousey has made history as a MMA fighter, as chapter 5 reveals, but, as it turns out, she is simply following in a rather fantastic family tradition.

  As the twentieth century came to a close, women saw historic gains in institutionalized equality. The governing bodies that had sprung up in the middle of the century and restricted females from competing in sports were suddenly forced to recognize equal rights for women under the law. It would be several more years before the IOC, perhaps the largest and most rigid sports governing body in the world, would acquiesce to admit female wrestlers, judo players, and boxers into the hallowed realm of the Olympic Games, but the momentum from the lawsuits and court decisions from the late twenti
eth century created a catalyst for women to compete in a number of sports that were supposedly reserved for men. The 1990s also popularized the sport of MMAs, and the fighting world was forever changed. As is detailed in the next chapter, women fought, and continue to fight, for equal opportunities and recognition as fighting sports continue to evolve.

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  Chapter 5

  MMA Goes Mainstream

  November 1993 was a banner month for the martial arts world. USA Boxing allowed women to compete in amateur events for the first time when sixteen-year-old Dallas Malloy defeated Heather Poyner in Lynwood, Washington. On November 12, 1993, the first fight card for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) aired in the United
States. The UFC would swiftly become the largest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion in the world, drawing viewers from a large demographic spectrum. But MMA and the UFC, as the largest provider of the sport, also drew harsh critiques and censure from numerous institutions and groups worldwide. Despite this, MMA, as a modern embodiment of the Pankration fought in the Roman Colosseum, became one of the fastest-growing sports in history.