The immediate aftermath saw a veritable stampede by promoters to bring female fighters onto more and more pay-per-view cards in more lucrative venues. This resulted in a growth of women’s boxing in both large and small markets across the United States. Martin’s fight also brought forth boxing superstars such as Lucia Rijker, a former kickboxing champion from the Netherlands, and Mia St. John, who seemed undefeatable in the boxing ring and was a former Playboy model.
Women’s Boxing: If Not One Way Then Another
Women’s boxing in the period of the late 1980s and early 1990s was still primarily consigned to minor markets and tiny hole-in-the wall venues—one cut above topless boxing, yet another variant on so-called foxy boxing and mud wrestling. Controversy often surrounded those fights and the question of the legitimacy of female contests was still a continuing issue plaguing the sport.
A case in point was the reaction to the first sanctioned professional female boxing contest in the state of Ohio. The match occurred on August 27, 1986, between a twenty-seven-year-old U.S. Army sergeant, “Lady” Debra (Debbie) Kennedy, and her thirty-three-year-old opponent, Sharon Harrington, a welder working for General Motors. The four-round bout played out in front of a packed house of more than fifteen hundred fight fans who alternatively cheered, laughed, and applauded the hard work of the two novice boxers who were both making their professional debut. The capacity crowd erupted into boos, however, when the bout was ruled a draw by the three judges.
While notable as a first, the reaction of former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, in attendance at the fight, was in keeping with the prevailing view that women did not belong in the ring—period. “Boxing is just not for ladies,” he said later, opining, “Though I think it was an interesting fight.”[2]
No less a boxing aficionado than Joyce Carol Oates, whose book On Boxing had become part of the sport’s canon almost from the date of its publication in 1987, famously derided women’s boxing as something monstrous.
Many women rejected such sentiments and learned to box, believing it was their right to do so. If they couldn’t get enough experience in the gym, they tried their luck in the ring and hoped for the best, training as hard as they could and sparring with whomever was willing to lace up the gloves against them. What women in the ring in this period did not have was the chance to fight competitively in an amateur boxing contest before entering the fray as professionals. Their only options were Toughwoman contests, burgeoning “white collar” club fights in boxing gyms, or male-driven fantasy “catfight” foxy boxing shows.
Women were garnering some training in the gym, but whereas a young male contender might have had five, six, or even seven years of training and competitive experience before turning pro, a woman might have had limited exposure, amounting to just a few months or a year or two (at most) learning the basics of boxing from a professional trainer before their first pro fight.
The dilemma created a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: Without the chance to truly learn their craft outside the corona of klieg lights of a professional fight, many performances in the ring were subpar at best and, at worst, dangerous for the participants. The first female death in a Toughwoman contestant—Stacy Young, age thirty, in 2003—is a terrible reminder of what can happen when an ill-prepared fighter is let loose in the ring in an unsanctioned bout.
Young, a mother of two and in her first fight, was hit repeatedly in the head and was clearly shown on videotape barely able to walk back to her corner at the end of the third round, while being sucker punched a few more times by her opponent. Young suffered a seizure, collapsed, and was subsequently declared brain dead. She was disconnected from life support two days later. No charges were filed in her death, although the state of Florida introduced legislation to more tightly regulate nonsanctioned bouts.
What the fistic women of the 1990s needed (and in some instances continue to need) was access to a safe place to refine their skills. Amateur competition, still outlawed for women, was the ideal, as the rules of the ring, trained referees, an equitable judging system, and the overall governance of a national boxing authority would protect them. The first glimmer of opportunity for women in the amateurs was to come toward the end of 1993—but for women who’d already started fighting, the professional boxing ring remained the place where they were schooled in the sport.
The Coal Miner’s Daughter
It’s what makes the victory sweeter. She knew I was a superior fighter, and the only chance she had was in the early rounds. Once I got my rhythm going, she knew it was just a matter of time.
—Christy Martin, June 1997[3]
Born Christy Renea Salters in Mullens, West Virginia, in 1968, the renowned world champion Christy “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” Martin began boxing in a Toughwoman contest in 1986 on a dare. By the time Martin, a gifted college basketball player majoring in education, took up the gloves hoping for the chance to win a thousand dollars, Arthur Dore’s Toughwoman franchise had begun sponsoring fights in West Virginia. Martin went on to win six Toughwoman fight nights over the next three years before she turned to professional boxing in 1989.
The sport at this time offered a few gimmicky avenues into boxing that ranged from the Toughwoman contests to foxy boxing nights (where bikini-clad women traded punches in a boxing ring) on through to legitimate boxing contests. Martin chose to begin contesting in the latter along with such fellow Toughwoman alumnae as Andrea DeShong, who was also beginning her career in the pros.
Coming out of the Toughwoman contests, Martin was a novelty and if she wanted to seriously pursue a professional career in boxing she knew she needed more experience. Her mother had been told of a boxing gym in Bristol, West Virginia, that was willing to train women. Martin’s mother contacted the gym owner who told her to come by with her daughter. Shortly thereafter, Martin met a boxing trainer named Jim Martin (Christy’s future husband). His initial reaction was to discourage Christy from boxing and planned “to have her ribs broke. A couple of ribs anyway,” he told a reporter some years later.
“The boss shows up, the guy who invited her out to the gym, so I thought I’d put that off for a couple of days. How would it look if I had her ribs broke right away? See what I’m saying? But I’m sort of a macho guy, and I didn’t think women belonged in the fight game. So there was no question I was going to have her ribs broke.”[4]
What with the boss “hanging around and hanging around,” Martin never had a chance to enact his plan. Somewhere along the way he changed his mind and became enamored with Christy’s skills, toughness, and, importantly, her willingness to listen and focus—an attribute missing in many of his male fighters. He was also aware of Christy’s femininity, planting the seeds of her eventual trademark “pink” ring persona around the idea that a woman fighter could be also be an attractive woman.
Fairly soon after she began to train with Jim Martin, she turned professional with mixed results—amassing a record of two wins and one draw before her first loss on the night of November 4, 1989, in Bristol, Tennessee. Her opponent was the unbeaten Andrea DeShong who had amassed five wins in as many fights. DeShong had already been a two-time World Toughwoman champion before turning to professional boxing in the same year as Martin. Both fighters had met once before in a Toughwoman contest where DeShong gave Martin her only loss. (Martin left the Toughwoman circuit with a final 6-1 record.)
The scheduled five-round boxing bout held in Bristol, Tennessee, was the toughest to date for Martin and in characterizing it years later Christy said, “When I lost in 1989 to Andrea DeShong, I got hit so hard in the first round I didn’t remember the rest of the fight.”[5] Through sheer willpower and tenacity, Martin managed to box through the rest of the five-round slugfest without getting dropped once and only lost the fight by five points—even surviving a purported bite on the cheek from DeShong (which DeShong rigorously denied).
Martin clamored for another go at DeShong and headed back to the gym. Once there, she worked even harder to perf
ect her skills and improve her defensive ring strategies in preparation for a rematch the following April. The bout was scheduled as a repeat of their first professional fight—a five-round bruiser at the same venue as their previous battle.
Feeling ready to avenge her loss to DeShong, Martin came on so strong in the first round that DeShong was given a standing eight-count by the referee after being on the receiving end of a barrage of Martin’s left-right combinations. In the second round, DeShong rallied and managed to back Martin onto the ropes, but that onslaught was not enough.
Listening to her coach, Jim Martin, say, “You’ve gotta’ be brave,” as he attended to her between rounds, Martin resumed her constant barrage from the third round on. It made for an exciting fight, as DeShong gave back just as hard and answered plenty. In the end, though, Martin won by a unanimous decision with a five-point advantage.
The win dropped DeShong’s previously unbeaten record to 8-1, and led her to retire from the ring for the next six years. The DeShong camp argued that Martin had been held back by the referee more than once to give her time to recover between blows. Though unsubstantiated in the official record—nor on viewing the fight, which has resurfaced on YouTube—the loss certainly colored DeShong’s feelings for Martin who insists DeShong “dogged” her around for years after their 1990 bout.
Martin and DeShong did fight a “rubber” match years later. In their third and final meeting in 1997, DeShong suffered a TKO loss at 1:43 of the seventh round in an eight-round battle. DeShong took the fight on short notice, and both Martin and DeShong, borrowing a page from the men’s side of the game, trash-talked each other in the run-up to the fight.
In one exchange, Martin was quoted as saying, “This is the first time I’ve seen you dressed respectable, like a woman,” while DeShong retorted that she would be a “dead canary,” making reference to Christy’s ring alias, “The Coal Miner’s Daughter.”[6]
Christy’s comments were in keeping with her promotional gambit to develop a fan base—a gambit following precisely on her appeal as a “feminine” woman who happened to box with all the ferocity of a man. It was a strategy both Christy and Jim felt had paid off.
If DeShong came to the fight on short notice in their last (1997) contest, so did Martin, who had been on an eight-month layoff over a contract dispute with Don King. This was not an uncommon occurrence with King’s fighters, although it was a first for Martin. Reflecting on it after the fight, Martin said, “But I wanted to work things out with Don. In the end I learned that being a nice person doesn’t necessarily help you out. You have to focus on the bottom line.”[7]
Once in the ring, DeShong fought energetically in the opening of the fight, giving Martin a bloody nose in the second round. Martin was also effective against DeShong, showing her different looks with body shots and straight rights. After a close second round, Martin’s constant barrage from the third round on—including more body shots and straight rights—made for an exciting fight. DeShong gamely stayed in the battle, showing strong skills and a good chin, but nonetheless she was noticeably tiring in the fourth round. By the fifth round, Martin slowed the pace a bit, but fought crisply and was in control of the ring, showing even stronger control in the sixth with a series of solid left hooks. Martin proved to be too much for DeShong in the seventh round, with the fight stopped after Martin delivered four quick devastating unanswered jabs. It gave Martin the TKO win and effectively ended their rivalry.
Martin’s other early fights were carefully managed. She perfected her straight-right knockout punching power on novice boxers who were intent on making their own professional debuts. This strategy of mismatches gave Martin a rapid string of victories in the early 1990s and a growing reputation as a female fighter who could actually fight. Her parallel strategy of appearing in pink created a buzz among her growing fans who, like Jim Martin, were impressed with Christy’s feminine attributes.
Martin’s growing prowess and string of KO wins came to the attention of the famous boxing impresario Don King. She went to see him when he made a swing through Florida in the hopes of putting a deal for her in place. King had been entertaining the idea of women’s boxing since writing an editorial for the World Boxing Union (WBU) in 1980, stating in part, “Being a member of a minority it would be very difficult for me to go against any minority trying to do anything they support and advocate, so whatever the women want to do I think it’s a personal decision and I certainly do support the women.”[8]
In truth, he had done nothing but murmur platitudes, and when Lady Tyger attempted to confront him during her month-long hunger strike to bring publicity to the lack of opportunities for women in the fight game, he had brushed her off completely.
No stranger to controversy and with an uncanny knack for making a buck, King’s instincts for promotion kicked in over any trepidations he might have had about women’s boxing. He was, in truth, immediately hooked and signed Martin in October of 1993 after her big win by way of a third-round knockout against a future IWBF champion, “Battling” Beverly Szymanski, a denizen of Detroit’s famed Kronk Gym, who’d also fought competitively as a kickboxer.
In watching Martin, King saw what boxing fans in places like Bristol, Tennessee; Daytona Beach, Florida; and Auburn Hills, Michigan, were seeing: a fierce competitor with actual boxing skills winning her bouts by TKO and all wrapped up in a pretty pink package. As a reporter for the Spokesman-Review newspaper put it later, “Boxing has long used sex appeal to sell its product, but scantily-clad women holding round cards are not as involved as a pink-clad boxer who can knock out opponents in the ring and be a mini-skirted knockout at the post fight news conference.”[9] It also left no doubt as to who was a woman—leaving the issue of gender stereotypes somewhat intact. As long as the “she” was in pink, having a great left hook was somehow less threatening.
Love him or hate him, Don King was a visionary in the world of boxing from the “Rumble in the Jungle” to the inspiration to bring women’s boxing to pay-per-view. Pushing King toward his decision were the other big news grabbers in women’s boxing, one of which was the reemergence of one of women’s boxing’s truly bright lights—the renowned Barbara “The Mighty Atom of the Ring” Buttrick of 1940s and 1950s fame. Buttrick stepped out of the shadows of her earlier behind-the-scenes work to found the WIBF, her own scheme for promoting female participation in the sport while elevating its status and improving the overall opportunities for female boxers.
Another important event in the world of women’s boxing that grabbed the attention of the media in the year that King signed Christy was the story of a sixteen-year-old teenager from Bellingham, Washington, with boxing dreams in her heart. Jennifer McCleery, fighting under the name “Dallas Malloy,” had become enamored with boxing after seeing Marlon Brando’s performance in On the Waterfront. Taking the last name of Brando’s character, Terry Malloy, as her nom de guerre, she added Dallas because it had an appealing sound—and even changed her named legally.
Malloy filed suit, along with her parents, in Washington State’s King County Superior Court for the right to box in the amateurs against other women. She challenged the rules that barred women from amateur competition—even against other women—based on sex discrimination. Almost immediately after the suit was filed, U.S. district court judge Barbara Rothstein issued an injunction against the United States Amateur Boxing Association, the International Amateur Boxing Association, and Malloy’s local Pacific Northwest Amateur Boxing Association. The ruling meant that she was free to pursue her dreams of fighting, and she proved successful in October of 1993 when she defeated twenty-one-year-old Heather Poyner by unanimous decision after boxing three two-minute rounds. Her win also showed that much had happened since Jill Lafler, the first woman to sue for the right to fight in the amateurs, failed in her lawsuit eleven years earlier.
Thanks to Dallas Malloy’s lawsuit along with Gail Grandchamp’s unrelenting pursuit of the right to box in the amateurs in the state of Massachuset
ts and Dee Hamaguchi in New York, the amateurs began to provide women opportunities to compete—legally.
In New York City, Dee Hamaguchi set the whole thing in motion in 1994 when she applied for a slot in the Golden Gloves under the name “D. Hamaguchi.” She was turned down, in part because her application was late, but she eventually opened up the New York Daily News Golden Gloves tournament in New York City to female participants beginning the following year, 1995, when sixty-five women competed in the tournament.
Canadian by birth, Hamaguchi began studying judo as an eight-year-old, eventually earning her black belt in 1987. She had also earned her BA degree in architecture at Yale University—but falling deeper in love with martial arts, she never practiced as an architect. Hamaguchi competed in and won Canadian judo competitions, and she also won her division at New York’s Empire Games in 1990—eventually becoming the U.S. national champion at forty-five kilograms in 1998 after becoming a United States citizen in 1997.
Aside from judo, Hamaguchi tried karate and then, finding her way to Gleason’s Gym, began training with Yoel Judah (boxer Zab Judah’s father), a martial artist who had competed as a kickboxer and boxer.
Hamaguchi learned to box alongside a growing group of women who trained for the amateurs including writer Kate Sekules, who chronicled her brief boxing career in her memoir The Boxer’s Heart: A Woman Fighting. Other members of this group included filmmakers Katya Bankowsky (Shadowboxers) and Karen Kusama (Girlfight). Although the four did not share trainers or even train together, their shared experiences and occasional locker room banter aligned them with a loose community of female boxers.
With the 1995 Golden Gloves opened to women, Hamaguchi was finally able to compete and made it all the way to the 101-pound final against Jill “The Zion Lion” Matthews. A former gymnast, Matthews had been training at the Wall Street Boxing Club—a well-known white-collar boxing gym—for a short while before entering amateur contests.
A History of Women's Boxing Page 34