A History of Women's Boxing Read online

  A History of

  Women’s Boxing

  A History of

  Women’s Boxing

  Malissa Smith

  ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Copyright © 2014 by Malissa Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, Malissa.

  A history of women’s boxing / Malissa Smith.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-4422-2994-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-2995-2 (ebook)

  1. Women boxers. 2. Boxing—History. I. Title.

  GV1136.3.S55 2014

  796.83—dc23

  2014001827

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Jed and Izzi, with my love.

  Acknowledgments

  The genesis for writing A History of Women’s Boxing came out of my love for the sport and the women I have come to know who perfect their craft, boxing, from the wee hours of the morning before work, till late at night after their obligations for the day are done.

  A few years ago, I applied to graduate school to pursue a master’s degree in liberal studies at the State University of New York’s Empire State College (ESC). The beauty of the program was it allowed me to “tickle” my academic fancy. I’d also started a blog called Girlboxing by then with stories about women’s boxing and personal experiences related to the sport.

  In my second year at ESC, I began to hone in on my thesis topic with my mentor, Dr. Elana Michelson. After a lot of soul searching, I had one of those eureka moments and decided to write about women’s boxing. There was some wonderful scholarship that had already been published by Jennifer Hargreaves, Carlo Rotella, and others, but the topic was ripe for exploration. With encouragement, assistance, and insights from my thesis advisor, Dr. Peggy Quinn, and the continued mentoring and intellectual challenges offered by Elana, I was able to successfully complete my master’s thesis, entitled Boundaries in Motion: Women’s Boxing.

  Doing the research for the thesis, I discovered that there was no one source that had even attempted to explore the history of women’s boxing—a rich, textured, and multilayered chronicle that began in the 1720s in England and continues to unfold to this day all around the world.

  Writing this work has been fraught with the kinds of dilemmas all historians face when it comes to choosing what constitutes history. All I can do is issue an apology for any aspects of the sport I may have missed that other scholars and enthusiasts of women’s boxing feel I was an idiot to not have included in this work. I am particularly sensitive to those athletes who practiced the sport beginning in the 1950s on through today’s athletes who may feel slighted by my lack of inclusion, or for perhaps giving too little to their place in the history, or for perhaps presenting facts they feel should have been expanded upon or been more nuanced in their presentation.

  While I tried my hardest to fact-check each instance through meticulous research and confirmation of information, the written record has been difficult if not impossible to obtain in many cases. Still, I shall be chagrined if an inaccuracy has found its way onto the printed page that was not couched in language that called into question the complete veracity of the account.

  In this endeavor I have also had the invaluable assistance of many people. Foremost has been Bruce Silverglade, owner of Gleason’s Gym. His generosity, which has extended to providing me a place to write portions of this book, has been nothing short of incredible. He has also been giving with his time, allowing me to interview him extensively on the topic of contemporary women’s boxing, as well as giving me several of the files he maintained on the sport that included original notes, photographs, and other documentation. I shall forever be in his debt for his assistance.

  No book on women’s boxing could ever be written without the assistance and acknowledgment of Sue TL Fox and her remarkable website, Women Archive Boxing Network (WBAN). Sue’s website is a treasure trove of information and documentation on women’s boxing from the 1970s on, with additional information on women’s boxing that stretches as far back as the 1720s. She has also been an inspiration to the fighters she so lovingly chronicles, providing a nexus point for communication and information about the sport.

  Photographers Mary Ann Owen and Sue Jaye Johnson have also been remarkably generous in their support of this work. Both have allowed me to troll through their remarkable photographs of contemporary practitioners of the sport, some of which have been included in the book.

  Mary Ann has been photographing athletes since the late 1990s as a photographer for Lady Boxer magazine and continues to this day as one of boxing’s premier photographers. Sue’s contributions to the sport have been in her chronicling of the United States’ first Olympic women’s boxing trials and, in particular, Claressa Shields, who brought home the first gold medal to have ever been awarded to a female middleweight.

  Professional and amateur female boxers Alicia Ashley, Bonnie Canino, Jill Emory, Gina M. Giudi, Deirdre Gogarty, Jen Hamann, Chevelle Hallback, Dee Hamaguchi, Heather Hardy, Melissa Hernandez, Ana Julaton, Sonya Lamonakis, Keisha McLeod-Wells, Michel Perlstein, Asa Sandell, Claressa Shields, Queen Underwood, Tricia Arcaro Turton, Shelito Vincent, and Kaliesha West have provided me with invaluable insight into their lives as fighters and the challenges they have faced in the sport. I am also indebted to my trainer, Lennox Blackmoore, for his perspectives on training women to box whether as amateurs or professionals.

  Boxing writers (and in some instances former fighters themselves) Sarah Deming, Cory Erdman, Mark A. Jones, Binnie Klien, Mischa Merz, Jill Morley, Michael O’Neill, Marq Piocos, Rachel Ruiz, Kate Sekules, and Michael Rivest have all been overly generous with the time they have given me—including endless hours of conversation, Twitter messages, and Facebook posts on the sport that may have bordered on tedium. Michael O’Neill in particular provided invaluable assistance when researching the Olympics.

  I am particularly grateful to Dr. Cathy Van Ingen, Dr. Benita Heiskanen, and Dr. Anju Reejhsinghani, who put in the painstaking work to host Fighting Women: A Symposium on Women’s Boxing, the first scholarly conference on the sport, held in Toronto, Canada, on June 21–22, 2012. Their forum gave me the opportunity to present some of my work on the topic—and their gracious support of the project and helpful insights were greatly appreciated.

  Research on the topic proved particularly challenging. Thankfully, I was given access to the Brooklyn College Library Archives and the Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive, and in particular I want to thank Jahongir Usmanov and Edythe Rosenblatt for their resourcefulness and assistance, especially making hundreds of Xerox copies.

  My editors at Rowman & Littlefield have also afforded me invaluable support. Christen Karniski guided me through the preparation of the book for publication, including huge as
sistance editing an overly long manuscript. Kellie Hagan, my production editor, also provided invaluable assistance—and I could not possibly have written the book without her expert guidance and editorial expertise.

  My friend Myles Ashby also took on the task of searching through digital photo libraries to assist me in locating images to add to the book and spent many hours helping me negotiate the ins and outs of photo licensing. I truly could not have done it without him.

  This work also could not have been completed without the incalculable assistance of my husband, Jed Stevenson, whose brilliant, patient, and painstaking editing of the manuscript (while maintaining our marriage and keeping our household going) has been a testament to his skill, his fortitude, and his love. As a white-collar boxer and boxing aficionado himself, he also brought insights from the male perspective that proved very helpful.

  My daughter, Izzi Stevenson’s, enthusiasm, perceptive commentary, and warm embraces have also been of immense help as I labored on this book—particularly when she shepherded her friends in and around the living room where “Mom” was working.

  My friends Patti and Pren Claflin have been wonderful boosters of the writing process—and provided me with my own personal writer’s retreat at their lovely home in Vermont. Barry Greenspan was also very understanding of the time I needed to write when he approved my last-minute vacation days at the end of the project. At the end of the project, Nadia Jaber was a whiz at solving the problems of indexing.

  Most of all, I am indebted to the thousands of women who have lifted up their fists to practice the sweet science. Their strength, dedication, and fortitude in the face of tremendous odds has been a source of continued inspiration—and it is for them that I have worked to assiduously and accurately depict their history.

  Acronyms and Abbreviations

  AAU

  American Amateur Association

  AIBA

  International Amateur Boxing Association

  BBBC

  British Boxing Board of Control

  GBU

  Global Boxing Union

  IBA

  International Boxing Association

  IBC

  International Boxing Council

  IBHOF

  International Boxing Hall of Fame

  IBU

  Irish Boxing Union

  IFBA

  International Female Boxing Association

  IWBA

  International Women’s Boxing Association

  IWBF

  International Women’s Boxing Federation

  IWPBA

  International Women’s Professional Boxing Association

  LCC

  London County Council

  MMA

  Mixed Martial Arts

  NAC

  Nevada Athletic Commission

  NBA

  National Boxing Association

  NWA

  National Wrestling Association

  NYSAC

  New York State Athletic Commission

  PAL

  Police Athletic League

  PNABA

  Pacific Northwest Amateur Boxing Association

  SAC

  California State Athletic Commission

  TKO

  Technical Knock Out

  UFC

  Ultimate Fighting Championship

  USABA

  USA Boxing Association

  VFA

  Variety Artists’ Federation

  WBAN

  Women Boxing Archive Network

  WBB

  Women’s Boxing Board

  WBC

  World Boxing Council

  WBF

  Women’s Boxing Federation

  WBO

  World Boxing Organization

  WIBA

  Women’s International Boxing Association

  WIBF

  Women’s International Boxing Federation

  WIBO

  Women’s International Boxing Organization

  WWBA

  Women’s World Boxing Association

  Introduction

  I am proud to be part of the movement that opened up women’s boxing at the amateur and professional level.[1]

  —Sonya Lamonakis, heavyweight pro boxer, Golden Gloves champion

  As an eleven-year-old growing up in Flint, Michigan, Claressa Shields didn’t really dare to dream about boxing in the Olympics. That was in 1995. Women had won the right to box as amateurs only two years before, and Olympic competition seemed a world away. When her trainer asked her why she wanted to take up boxing, she said simply, “I’m just tired of losing.”[2]

  Over the years she gained confidence and the skills that culminated in her winning the 2011 National PAL Middleweight Championship. Her triumph led to a berth in the first-ever women’s USA Boxing Olympic Trials Championships, where the then sixteen-year-old defeated all comers to become the first women’s USA Boxing Olympic Trials champion in the history of her division.

  What was even more remarkable was that the then seventeen-year-old became the first American woman in history to win a gold medal at the Olympics for boxing in one of the three weight categories open to women at the 2012 London Games.

  Claressa Shields’s teammate, the Texas-born Marlen Esparza, began boxing at eleven, too, picking up the gloves as a troubled young girl and eventually winning her first USA Boxing National Championship at barely sixteen years of age—all while earning straight As in school.

  Continuing to both box and excel in her schooling, Marlen Esparza became the reigning 2012 USA Boxing Women’s Flyweight champion at the age of twenty-two. She went on to capture the first USA Boxing Olympic Trials title in her division and holds a record-breaking six consecutive national championships—but her accolades do not stop there.

  Her most important accomplishment has been to make history as the first female USA boxing team member to qualify for the Olympic Games, an honor she says is “a big step—not really just for boxing, but for women in general.”[3]

  More amazingly, she walked away with the first-ever bronze medal in boxing for women by an American. In early 2014, she also captured her record-breaking eighth national title.

  The third woman to represent the United States at the London 2012 Games was Queen Underwood, a lightweight boxer from Seattle, Washington, who overcame adversity to reach the pinnacle of amateur sports. While she did not medal, she proudly won the right to represent the United States when she won the lightweight championship at the Olympic trials. She had also been a USA boxing national champion with a superb record of accomplishment inside the squared circle.

  The road to the pantheon of amateur sports—the Olympics—has been paved by the hard work, dedication, and passion of countless women over the centuries who have each made a contribution to the sport they love whether as practitioners, spectators, trainers, managers, referees, judges, or writers.

  Much is owed to these women, and while Claressa Shields, Marlen Esparza, and Queen Underwood each shared in the glory of the 2012 Summer Games, they are the living continuum of a dream of Olympic greatness first begun in St. Louis in the 1904 Games when a handful of women put on a demonstration of their fistic prowess in accordance with the prevailing Marquis of Queensbury rules.

  One more recent heroine of the boxing world is Christy “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” Martin, whose legendary battle against Deirdre “Dangerous” Gogarty in 1996 landed Christy on the cover of Sports Illustrated and put women’s boxing on the map—having already been the first woman signed by the notorious boxing promoter Don King.

  Other recent pioneers in the sport, such as Barbara “The Mighty Atom of the Ring” Buttrick, who began her career fighting in carnival boxing shows in the late 1940s and 1950s, are less well-known but part of a long line of pugilist females who have plied their trade since the first documented women’s boxing encounter in 1722. An advertisement that year placed in the London Journal read:

  Challenge

 
I, Elizabeth Wilkinson, of Clerkenwell, having had some words with Hannah Hayfield and requiring satisfaction, do invite her to meet me on the Stage, and box with me for three guineas, each woman holding half a crown in each hand, and the first woman that drops her money to lose the battle.

  Answer

  I, Hannah Hayfield, of Newgate Market, hearing of the resoluteness of Elizabeth Wilkinson, will not fail, God willing, to give her more blows than words—desiring home blows, and from her, no favor; She may expect a good thumping.[4]

  Women of the ring have fought for gold guineas, butter dishes, a percentage of the ticket sales, and championship titles, but have mostly come into the game for nothing more than their love of boxing—a sport that tests their will, their courage, and even their right to cross the velvet ropes into what has historically been considered a male-only domain.

  What is surprising to many is the rich and grand tradition of earlier martial women rooted in the writings of Homer, Plutarch, and Herodotus, who gave us wonderful mythological tales and historical interpretations of Greek goddesses and Amazons. Herodotus famously wrote:

  When the Greeks were at war with the Amazons (whom the Scythians call Oiorpata, a name signifying in our tongue killers of men, for in Scythian a man is “oior” and to kill is “pata”), the story runs that after their victory on the Thermodon they sailed away carrying in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take alive; and out at sea the Amazons attacked the crews and killed them.[5]