A History of Women's Boxing Read online

  Whether as young Spartan girls who wrestled and boxed for exercise against boys or the mythic character Atalanta who famously wrestled Peleus at King Pelius’s funeral games, on through the exploits of the goddesses Athena and Artemis—not to mention the Amazon “race”—these classical images demonstrate that women have been imagined as warriors throughout history.

  Since antiquity there have been frequent flurries of female participation in the martial arts—instances that are often at the margins of history and yet can be found by teasing out the little bits of evidence that lie in old manuscripts, works of art, newspaper clippings, and the overstuffed file cabinets of collections of boxing memorabilia that reveal handbills and dusty photographs of female fighters from bygone eras. These documents include the late 13th- or early 14th-century folio page from the famed Tower manuscript of women learning to sword fight.

  English ballads beginning in the mid-17th century spoke of female sailors and soldiers who, donning the clothes of young men, sought their fortunes for adventure, fealty, or in pursuit of their sweethearts.

  While a lot of the history of female martial efforts has yet to be uncovered, as far back as the early 18th century, women such as Elizabeth Wilkinson and Hannah Hyfield have plied their trade as professional and amateur boxers. Sporting names such as “The Ass-Driver from Stoke Newington” or “The Market Woman,” what comes down to us is not only the flavor of the times, but also the sense of these oft-referred to viragos and Amazons as working women, with ring aliases not so different from modern ones such as “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” or “The Preacher’s Daughter.”

  Conveying the poetic musings of the ring, they add a statement of implicit pedigree, whether as a denizen of a trade or, in the case of more contemporary fighters, as part of a long line of proud working people exhibiting profound familial pride.

  Women who box intuit that donning the gloves—whether as regulars of amateur fight nights in the local gym, tacky Vegas-style casinos, or fighting off the recently defeated call for amateur boxers to wear skirts in competition—means they are free to create their own identities. These self-made monikers have less to do with whether it’s “okay” to fight if you’re a “girl” and more to do with finding their own reserves of courage and strength as they engage in what is lovingly referred to by practitioners and fans as the “sweet science.”

  Boxing by its very nature is a pas de deux of defensive and offensive posturing played out with all of the improvisational skills of a jazz musician. To find oneself in the ring at all, as on the stage of a music hall, is a testament to years of repetitive labor for the opportunity to perform for an audience. And just as musicians will riff and trill off the lines of a melody, so will a boxer begin with a jab and a straight right before finding the best angles of offense and defense to overcome an opponent.

  As with music, such actions can come in great spurts of creative, aggressive posturing or quiet, defensive moments. Aggression, however, is clearly harnessed to the repertoire of movements available to a skilled fighter who seeks out all opportunity and advantage in the ring in order to win.

  The harnessing of such skill and power for women who box today is not so much a new arena as an old one rediscovered, given that women have labored at boxing regularly since the 18th century. These noteworthy fighters have weighed the balance sheet of boxing as one of physical capital against the potential loss and have continued to box. They have also balanced the social costs and nonetheless still push at the ropes of the ring for a place inside its vaulted canvas.

  In describing the boxing gym, writer and amateur women’s boxing champion Mischa Merz wrote about seeing the women fighters at Gleason’s Gym for the first time. Her perspective perhaps shines a light on what it means for women when they pick up the gloves.

  And here they were, neither subverting nor perverting masculinity or femininity, nor bringing the sport into disrepute. The women inhabited Gleason’s as if they’d always been there. And any questions about their right to be there would be met with bewildered silence from the men I asked, as if the suggestion were weird, like asking if women should be allowed to wear trousers.[6]

  The complex history of female boxing has many starting points. In the United States one such beginning is on March 17, 1876. As reported in no less a newspaper than the New York Times, a match was set between two variety dancers—Miss Nell Saunders and Miss Rose Harland—for the tidy sum of $200 and a piece of silver-plate that was purportedly a butter dish. The match was set at the world-famous Henry Hill’s concert saloon, a veritable institution of the “swell set” on Houston Street in lower Manhattan with the New York Times reporting both women “at once went into training—Miss Saunders under the tuition of her husband, while James Kelly gave Miss Harland lessons in the pugilistic art.”[7]

  Over the next thirty years, women’s boxing took hold with more and more women appearing in matches at Henry Hill’s where world championship titles were bestowed under the auspices of Richard K. Fox’s National Police Gazette newspaper. The action branched out across the country onto early vaudeville stages and became a feature of variety shows in places stretching from Kansas City to San Francisco.

  Women’s boxing even appeared in one of Thomas A. Edison’s early film reels. That short showed a brief sequence from the Gordon Sisters famed vaudeville act (starring Bessie, sometimes known as Belle, and Minnie)—the sisters were astonishingly one of two pairs of Gordon Sisters (unrelated) performing in boxing shows on the circuit.

  Women spectators in the late 19th century were also beginning to be featured at the fights in special seats set aside for them, and the writers Nellie Bly and Annie Laurie were among the first to author newspaper articles about the sport from the perspective of the “gentler sex.”

  Bly quoted the famed world champion fighter John L. Sullivan as saying, “You are the first woman who ever interviewed me. And I have given you more than I ever gave any reporter in my life.”[8] A woman was also famously depicted as a boxer in William H. Bishop’s utopian novel The Garden of Eden, published in 1895, mirroring changing ideals of womanhood and the embrace of athleticism as a welcomed attribute of the New Woman.

  With the coming of World War I and its aftermath, female boxing was becoming more visible in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States, both in the ring and as a form of exercise. Women’s attendance at sanctioned prizefights was promoted to show that prize fighting was an acceptable entertainment—even for the ladies.

  The most blatant attempt at drawing in female paying customers was when the Don King of his era, Tex Richard, came up with the idea of a “Jenny Wren” section to help promote female attendance at a Jack Dempsey contest, rightly figuring that if he could fill his seats with bona fide ladies, gentlemen would surely follow.

  A new generation of women reported on boxing from Djuna Barnes in Vanity Fair to Katherine Fullerton Gerould in Harper’s. Pockets of women’s boxing subcultures began to sprout up as well, including the Busters Club in Flint, Michigan—according to Kate Sekules in her book about her own experiences as a professional boxer in the late 1990s.

  Boxing exercises became a craze every bit as potent as “contemporary boxercise.” In Weimar Germany boxing for women became so mainstream it was featured as a fitness option aboard German luxury liners, while in England female fighters began to make the rounds as carnival sideshow attractions.

  After her success in carnival shows in the early 1950s both in Britain and France, England’s Barbara “The Mighty Atom of the Ring” Buttrick came to the United States. Once there, she pushed her way into the ring by finding other women boxers who were following the same path. She also fought men and throughout her career in the sport stayed one step ahead of the boxing commissioners who continued to refuse to legalize women’s participation. Buttrick was never daunted. She was able to draw large crowds and had the first female bout called live on the radio in 1954. Buttrick’s tenaciousness in the ring set the stage for wider
acceptance of a steady stream of professional female fighters who plied the canvas in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

  This roster of these fighters included Sue “Tiger Lily” Fox, a true trailblazer for the sport of women’s boxing, and such boxers as Caroline Svendsen, the first woman fighter to be licensed by the Nevada State Athletic Commission in 1975, and Pat Pineda, the first woman fighter to be licensed in California in 1976.

  No mention of these 1970s pioneers would be complete without making note of the incredible contributions of Jackie “The Female Ali” Tonawanda. In 1975 she sued New York State for the right to fight legally, but not satisfied to wait, she became the first woman to fight in Madison Square Garden as part of the Aaron Bank’s Oriental World of Self Defense show, knocking out her male opponent, kickboxer Larry Rodania, in the second round. Tonawanda continued her battle against the New York State Athletic Commission, finally in 1978 gaining one of the first boxing licenses issued to a female boxer, along with Cathy “Cat” Davis and Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar.

  The biggest rise in the sport in the United States began in the early 1990s when the parallel tracks of Christy Martin’s rise to fame and the recognition of women’s boxing as an amateur sport led to exponential participation. No longer a strange novelty, women’s boxing began to be featured on the undercard of major pay-per-view championship fights, while winning an audience of loyal fans along the way.

  The next big star in women’s boxing was none other than Muhammad Ali’s daughter Laila “She Bee Stingin’” Ali. Her natural charisma, striking beauty, and surprisingly high level of boxing skills further galvanized the sport and piqued the interest of a growing fan base. What followed, however, was a huge crash as women without the skills of Christy and Laila were pushed into the ring, leading promoters to start shying away from adding women’s bouts to their fight cards, claiming they were not “ready.”

  Women’s boxing, however, had made an impact and a big one. Hilary Swank’s character, Maggie, in the Clint Eastwood 2005 Oscar-winning movie Million Dollar Baby (based on the boxing writer F. X. Toole’s short story in his book Rope Burns) was reflective of the highs and lows of the women’s game and added a new iconic figure to the lexicon of the boxing genre film—only this time, as a female character. The images of Maggie resonated with many women in boxing who have had to persevere against tremendous odds to rise—and perhaps fall—only to find redemption and a state of grace along the way.

  In the realm of women’s boxing, however, boxing was and still is more often than not relegated to the backwaters of boxing gyms, VFW halls, restaurants, and the like. Televised fights, while plentiful in the heady days of Don King’s early promotion of Christy Martin in the mid-1990s, have all but dried up for women in the United States attempting to make careers as professional fighters—while newer sports, such as MMA, have begun to replace the public’s appetite for boxing.

  That does not deter women from continuing to climb through the ropes on their own terms. They push their bodies, garnering the muscles and sinews of exquisite health, on through the triumphs and trophies of the amateur world to the opportunity to win professional championship titles and even some modicum of celebrity in the realm of the larger boxing world.

  These remarkable women ultimately inhabit an understanding of themselves and their place as self-invented and self-actualized. When asked about life without boxing, professional champion fighter-turned-trainer Bonnie “The Cobra” Canino “drew a blank” as if such a life were unfathomable.

  For the women of the ring the invention of a boxing identity comes with a complex set of emotions: on the one hand celebratory at having mastered the skills necessary to comport themselves like a boxer, while on the other a deep sense of frustration at not being taken seriously.

  In a recent interview WBO welterweight champion Kaliesha “Wild Wild” West exemplified these feelings. West said, “The whole idea of women’s boxing has been frustrating for me because it is nothing that I expected or looked into when I was little even being number one—it’s not how it should be for us.”

  What she expected was to be treated like a champion, feted and sought after for opportunities in the ring and the recipient of lucrative financial deals as a spokesperson. What she’s gotten is the real-world experience of “telling promoters, ‘Hey, we’ll sell this many tickets and we’ll be able to fill this many seats if you put us on your card for this budget and it will only cost you this much.’”[9]

  West is not unique in feeling let down by the business side of boxing. She has sacrificed years of her life to excel, and yet despite the disappointments, she continues to organize everything around boxing, making her way to the gym seven days a week to train, not unlike countless other women—professionals and amateurs, fitness nuts and boxercisers, each of whom has grown to love the sport.

  As noted earlier, women have had a long tradition as pugilists plying the canvas of the ring. Through enormous effort and fortitude these women are finally being honored as Olympians. In the ephemera of opportunities lost and gained, this ultimate test does have meaning and that legitimacy will provide an entirely new generation of female boxers a chance to dream.

  1. Malissa Smith. “Exclusive Interview with Sonya Lamonakis Set to Fight on June 14th @ Roseland Ballroom.” Girlboxing, June 10, 2012.

  2. “Bout Time: Claressa Shields.” New York Times, January 25, 2012. [NYTimes.com]

  3. Sandra Johnson. “2012 Olympians: Marlen Esparza Becomes First American Female to Qualify for the Olympic Games.” Yahoo Sports. May 22, 2012. [Yahoosports.com]

  4. Pierce Egan. Boxiana.

  5. Herodotus. The Histories. A. D. Godley, ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1920. Section 4.110–117. [Faculty.fairfield.edu]

  6. Mischa Merz. The Sweetest Thing, p. 5.

  7. “Nonsensical Exhibition at Henry Hill’s.” New York Times, March 17, 1876. [NYTimes.com]

  8. Nellie Bly. “A Visit with John L. Sullivan.” New York World, July 28, 1889. [Bareknuckleboxinghalloffame.com]

  9. “Kaliesha West Interview.” Transworld Sports. June 7, 2012. [Youtube.com]

  Chapter 1

  She-Devils and Amazonian Tigresses

  Women Enter the Boxing Ring

  Boxing as we know it today dates back to the early 1700s in London, England. Almost from the start, women participated in bouts, which were both well publicized and rousing crowd-pleasers. The earliest female fighters—women like Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes, known as “The City Championess”—advertised their battles in the London newspapers of the day. Wilkinson, along with Hannah Hyfield, “The Newgate Market Basket-Woman,” fought with great pugilistic prowess and gained prominence in the 1720s using the bare-knuckle boxing style of James Figg.

  The popularity of these female contests began to wane as the century wore on due to changing ideals of acceptable female behavior. At the same time boxing not only became identified as a “manly art,” but also as an important virtue of Britishness in the Regency era. The role of women changed from participant to spectator by the close of the 18th century. Hence, though women’s bare-knuckle boxing bouts are shown to have persisted, the identification of boxing with masculinity came to mean that women’s boxing was less visible to the public—but it was neither forgotten nor unattended.

  Female Prizefighters Enter the Ring

  From Figg’s Theatre he will not miss a night.

  Though cocks, and bulls and Irish women fight.

  —James Bramston, The Art of Politicks[1]

  Elizabeth Wilkinson first came to prominence on the boxing stage in 1722. Little is known about where she came from, but she has been linked to a boxer and sword fighter named Robert Wilkinson who performed at the Hockley in the Hole theater, where she first appeared. (Robert Wilkinson was a renowned rogue who was executed at Newgate Prison for an infamous murder.) How Elizabeth came to be such a skilled fighter has also not been established—but what is known is that she certainly did participate in prizefights.<
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  Her advertisement in the London Journal challenging Hannah Hyfield may well have resulted in the first female prizefight in London. Mention of a fight in 1722 does come to us from a notice published on June 23, 1722, in the London Journal:

  Boxing in publick at the Bear Garden is what has lately obtained very much amongst the Men, but till last Week we never heard of Women being engaged that Way, when two of the Feminine Gender appeared for the first Time on the Theatre of War at Hockley in the Hole.[2]

  There is some question as to whether the Wilkinson v. Hyfield bout ever actually occurred or, if it did, whether it was fought at the time and place appointed or if it was the fight noted in the London Journal article. (Wilkinson’s opponent in that fight may well have been Martha Jones, whom sources claim she fought for twenty-two minutes—although the exact date of the fight is in question.) What we do know is that there already was a published account describing a likely match between two women in a book by the German Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach who, traveling through England in 1710, wrote about his impressions of a prizefight.

  Uffenbach marveled at the boisterous crowds and learned, while speaking with a highly “vociferous” female spectator, “that two years ago she had fought another female in this place without stays and in nothing but a shift. They had fought stoutly and drawn blood, which was apparently no new sight in England.”[3]

  The French writer Martin Nogue also wrote of his experiences, observing women fighting in his book entitled Voyages et Aventures, published in 1728, stating, “Des femmes & des filles même combattent de la même forte, dépouillées jusqu’a la ceinture,”[4] roughly translated as his having viewed women and girls fighting with the same strength (as men) whilst stripped down to their belts. Whether they were actually bare breasted or clothed in undergarments is not stated, although other writers have indicated that women fought topless, certainly adding to the prurient interest.