Seattle’s Zinda Foster and Sharon Allbery Punch Their Way Into History in 1975

Zinda Kaye Dinish-Foster was celebrated as “a true daughter of Seattle” following her untimely death at the age of 68 on November 26, 2022. A selfless and well-loved human being, Foster was remembered as a committed wife of 47 years to her husband Donald, a loving mother to her daughter-in-law Michele and son Jacobe, whose passing sadly preceded hers, a volunteer for the Montlake and Garfield Community Centers, a track and field coach, a learning coordinator and student advocate during a 25-year career at Lakeside School, a devout worshipper at the First AME church, an outspoken social activist, an accomplished seamstress who handcrafted her own prom and wedding dresses, and an artisan who made jewelry and quilts.

One accolade conspicuously absent from the outpouring of Zinda’s many affectionate testimonials was her contribution to the world of women’s boxing. There was no mention of the fact that in 1975 Foster made history by competing in the first sanctioned female prizefight to take place not just in her hometown of Seattle, or the state of Washington, but the entire Pacific Northwest region.         

Despite making it something of an unspoken personal mission to always put the concerns and the happiness of others well before her own, Zinda declared, “I can’t dismiss that my life matters, because I was born a Negro, elevated to Black and co-opted to be a hyphenated African American.” Welcomed into the world on February 22, 1954 by her parents David and Gynell Dinish at King County Hospital, Foster grew up in what she referred to as “the historically African American Central District” with nine siblings.

Foster remarked that she was “educated in underfunded public schools” but, nevertheless, managed to become a teenaged overachiever both academically and athletically. An honor roll student who co-edited the Garfield High School yearbook, Foster was a varsity cheerleader and three-time track and field champion as a member of CAYA (Crestview Area Youth Association), running the 50-yard dash in 5.9 seconds during a state meet to set a new girls’ record. She also enjoyed skating in her free time, whether on ice or at the roller rink.

Now twenty-one, Zinda was putting herself through college by working as an account administrator and model for the Bon Marche department store. She was also a newlywed, having just married former amateur boxer Donald Foster Jr., who had won the Tacoma Golden Gloves among other regional titles. Washington state being one of several to see women beginning to lobby athletic commissions for professional boxing licenses in the 1970s, with only Caroline Svendsen of Nevada just recently successful in her pursuit to that point, the unassuming Zinda Foster would end up as a primary beneficiary of the pressure being applied to local politicians by female residents of the Evergreen State who had to fight the powers that be for the right to fight one another. The matter reached all the way to the desk of the state’s attorney general Ernest Furia, who ruled in the women’s favor, stating that “they’re entitled to fight.”

If for no other reason than they found themselves legally backed into a corner they couldn’t muscle their way out of, the Washington State Athletic Commission approved the addition of a women’s bout, consisting of 3 one-minute rounds, to the October 21, 1975 card at the Seattle Center Arena which would be headlined by 1972 Olympic gold medalist Sugar Ray Seales, a native of Tacoma who was then 26-2-1 as a pro and defending his Pacific Northwest middleweight title against Renton’s ‘Iron’ Mike Lankester. “I talked to the attorney general’s office about this and I’m told we can’t stop this. So I’m not going to,” commission chairman Jimmy Rondeau conceded as if in helpless surrender. “But,” Rondeau felt compelled to point out, “we look upon this as an exhibition.”

Joe Williams, whose Global Productions was promoting the show, wasn’t thrilled either about the recent turn of events. He disclosed that there were “about 15 (women) who called us wanting to be on the card,” some of whom threatened to picket outside the arena on fight night if Williams failed to comply. “So we chose these two,” he relented.

“These two” that Williams referenced rather dismissively were Zinda Foster and Sharon Allbery, a 34-year-old widow and mother of three who worked as an advertising executive for Seattle radio station KUUU, coached the Westgate little league baseball team in Edmonds, and had been a bronc rider in the rodeo. “My father used to box as an amateur. I’m not really a women’s libber, but I believe in equality in sports,” said Allbery. “I’ve been involved in sports all my life. My dad was very athletic and I’ve tried some baseball, basketball, scuba diving, you name it.” Although she had taught her 13-year-old daughter self-defense techniques, Allbery confessed that “boxing is something I’ve never done, except with my two sons around the house.” Sharon said that her boys were initially “excited” about the idea of their mom being a boxer, but were nervous about the possibility of seeing her get hurt.    

“We fight a lot at home. I’ve boxed with him. I know how,” said Zinda Foster of sparring with her husband Don. “I feel good. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. No, I’m not looking for a career in boxing. I’m sort of over the hill for that,” she admitted, even though she was only twenty-one. “But I may be able to open some doors for younger girls. I’ve always felt that women have just as much right in sports as men. If women have the capabilities, why not?”

With the more quiet and lowkey Foster taking everything in stride, Allbery seemed to be getting swept up in the fanfare. “The press conference Friday was quite remarkable. Everybody seemed to be all for it,” she offered. “We had no problem passing the exam. The commission just wanted to know if we could handle ourselves. They’re mainly concerned with basic boxing fundamentals.” The afternoon of the fight, a news crew followed Sharon to a local salon where she got her hair done for the occasion. Foster, meanwhile, was busy answering phones during her day shift at Bon Marche, which just so happened to be a designated sales outlet for fight tickets. Even if her employee discount applied, Zinda didn’t need to buy a ticket, of course. In just a few short hours, she would be punching the time clock at Bon Marche before heading to the Seattle Center Arena where she would be inside the ring punching Sharon Allbery.

Angelo Dundee, the legendary trainer of Muhammad Ali, Carmen Basilio, and Sugar Ramos to name a few, was in town to work the corner of Mike Lankester for his main event title fight against Sugar Ray Seales and had taken the time to offer Allbery some pointers. “He seems to be very serious about it. Right away I could see why he’s such a respected trainer,” Sharon said. “He’s very easy to understand and work with. Basically, he’s emphasized that I should come up with a good solid defense.” Sound advice, if only she had followed it.    

Weighing in at 133 pounds and wearing a sleeveless t-shirt tucked into a blue wrestling singlet, Allbery was fashionably late making her appearance to step between the ropes, causing the ring announcer to joke, “Isn’t that just like a woman?” Dressed in simple green running shorts and a white tank top, Foster was announced at 131 pounds. Both women sported knee-length tube socks fashionable at the time. Being made to wait through the prolonged pre-fight formalities notwithstanding, Foster wasted little time getting down to business, pumping her left jab in Allbery’s face and enjoying repeated success with right hand follow-ups, confirming that she indeed knew what she was doing.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for Allbery to abandon what she had been instructed to do by Angelo Dundee now that push came to shove, instead spending the majority of the fight’s three minutes in a bewildered survival mode, backpedaling away from Foster and throwing patty cake-type punches with both hands. The best shot of the fight was a right cross landed by Zinda over Allbery’s two outstretched and dormant gloves in the second round, sending Sharon reeling back into the ropes where she pawed at her bleeding nose. Referee Jack Ableman jumped between the combatants to momentarily stop the onslaught but got a little too close for comfort once action resumed. “I nearly got clipped,” Ableman laughed afterwards.

In a show of diplomatic goodwill, the bout was declared a draw to the dismay of the 4,641 fans who booed the decision, or non-decision as it were. “When you have two ladies with that much sincerity, what can you say?” commented Ableman. Foster and Allbery were both paid $350, “the minimum appearance fee for this sort of bout” according to one of the promoters.

“I’m going to retire. Go back to singing. It’s safer,” said Sharon Allbery between gulps of air while wiping blood from her nose with one hand and holding a bouquet of red roses presented to her by a ringside admirer with the other. “It was lots of work. More than I like,” she acknowledged. “She hit me once—hard. It made me see stars. It really did. I must have hit her hard at least once because I’ve a big bruise here on my right hand.”

Athletic commission chairman Jimmy Rondeau, who made no bones about the fact that he had given the greenlight to the women’s bout only under protest to begin with, didn’t hold back when asked for his post-fight reflections. “It made me a little sick,” he said melodramatically. “We were sort of forced into it by a recent court ruling, but I think I might let them sue me before we do it again.”

Ringside physician Alex Grinstein shared Rondeau’s dim view of the situation. “Sharon’s nose was bruised and banged up a bit. It was the silliest thing I’ve seen in the 40 years I’ve been involved in sports,” the doctor ventured. “There’s no sense to it. It’s repulsive.”

The contempt wasn’t strictly limited to the men in attendance. “A woman’s place is not in the ring,” rued one female boxing fan who made it abundantly clear she was just there to see the main event. “We aren’t made to be fighters.”    

Although Zinda Foster enjoyed the experience, she remained doubtful that there was a future in boxing for her. “I don’t know whether I’ll do it again,” she pondered. “I don’t think my husband wants me to be away from home that much.”       

Continuing her studies at Whitman College and Western Washington State University, Foster would eventually earn her baccalaureate at the University of Washington and a master’s degree from Seattle University. The year after her foray into boxing, Zinda tried her hand at acting and landed a lead role in a Black Arts West production of the Langston Hughes gospel play Tambourines to Glory. Foster found her calling as an educator and community leader who truly made a difference and touched many lives, whether it was by surprising students and colleagues with their favorite snacks after a long day or coordinating voter registration efforts that extended as far as Texas, Georgia, and Ohio. The way she saw it, the smallest gesture could reasonably be just as impactful as the grandest.

“She was the type of person who saw a need and filled it,” said her niece, Latasia Lanier. Even if it was for one fleeting moment in the life of a young woman in her early twenties who was destined to achieve many remarkable things for which she would be respectfully memorialized, Zinda Foster helped fill a need in women’s boxing that kept the wheels of progress turning.

“Statues will probably never be erected in honor of Zinda Foster and Sharon Allbery,” wrote Tacoma News Tribune sports editor Earl Luebker in 1975. “But they are pioneer women.”

 

Sources:

Stan Farber. Dundee Sees Seales Date as Crucial (Tacoma News Tribune, October 18, 1975)

Will Nessly. Women to Step Into Ring (Everett Daily Herald, October 18, 1975)

Stan Farber. Seales, Mike Tangle Tonight (Tacoma News Tribune, October 21, 1975)

Paul Miller. When Sharon Meets Zenda, Blows Will Be Struck For Women’s Lib (Everett Daily Herald, October 21, 1975)

Steve Kelley. Female Fighter Late, Then Loses (The Olympian, October 22, 1975)

Two Women Meet In Seattle Ring, Fight to Draw (Chico Enterprise-Record, October 22, 1975)

Will Nessly. She’s Hanging Up the Gloves (Everett Daily Herald, October 22, 1975)

Earl Luebker. Zinda, Sharon Pioneer Field as Ringwomen (Tacoma News Tribune, October 22, 1975)

Women Boxing—1975 (Footage World, uploaded to YouTube October 28, 2009)

Zinda Foster—2020 Artist Profiles, Winners: Black Lives Matter Artist Grant (Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU, 2020)

Obituary: Zinda Kaye Dinish-Foster (The Seattle Medium, December 21, 2022)

Samara N. What a Spirit: Celebrating Ms. Zinda Foster (Lakeside School Tatler, January 10, 2023) 

How the Unlikely Duo of Gladys Smith and Toni Tucker Achieved a First for Women’s Boxing in New York

The first known women’s boxing match that took place in the United States occurred at Harry Hill’s Theater in New York on March 16, 1876 when Nell Saunders engaged Rose Harland in a sparring competition officiated by Hill himself, who rewarded Saunders with a narrow decision and a silver  butter dish. Twelve years later, Hattie Leslie and Alice Leary participated in an illegal prizefight in a barn on Navy Island, located off Buffalo’s Niagara River, resulting in the arrests of both combatants as well as their seconds and financial backers. ‘Countess’ Jeanne LaMar had boxed exhibitions in New York and petitioned the state athletic commission for a professional license in 1922 but was denied, though she would obtain one from New Jersey the year after. African American trailblazers Emma Maitland and Aurelia Wheeldin brought their ‘Tea For Two’ stage act, during which they boxed one another for three rounds, to cabarets, ballrooms, and vaudeville theaters not only all around Manhattan but across the globe throughout the 1920s and 30s.

After four years of going toe to toe with the New York State Athletic Commission in grueling legal battles, Lady Tyger Trimiar, Jackie Tonawanda and Cathy Davis were simultaneously granted their professional boxing licenses on September 19, 1978. It would take another ten months for the first officially sanctioned women’s boxing match in New York state history to be contested and, curious as it might seem, none of the three female pugilists who fought so hard for so long to make it happen would be involved.

Lady Tyger had fought her friend and Job Corps coworker ‘Killer’ Diane Corum in an amateur bout at the Audubon Ballroom on May 1, 1974 and, five months later, sparred both future middleweight world champion Vito Antuofermo and Junior Olympic lightweight champion Miles Ruane during an exhibition in Little Italy but would never once box in her home state as a professional. Neither would Jackie Tonawanda, the self-proclaimed ‘Female Ali,’ who became the first women’s boxer to compete in Madison Square Garden on June 7, 1975, albeit in a mixed gender exhibition against kickboxer Larry Rodania. Among the triumvirate of original licensees, only Cathy ‘Cat’ Davis would fight in New York and not until April 11, 1981 when she knocked out Lavonne Ludian at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in upstate Poughkeepsie.

In Jackie Tonawanda’s only verifiable pro bout, she was beaten by Valerie Diane Clark, who fought as ‘Dynamite’ Diane, winner by six-round split decision over ‘the Female Ali’ to capture the WWBA light-heavyweight title and a $300 purse in Louisville, Kentucky on February 16, 1979. Two months later, Clark was scheduled to participate in New York’s inaugural women’s professional boxing match opposite Marge Golden at the War Memorial in Syracuse. Promoter Tony Graziano received the begrudging seal of approval from the New York State Boxing Commission to add the women’s bout to the April 14 card sponsored by the Canastota Boxing Club.

“Why would a woman want to get mixed up in this business?” grouched regional athletic commissioner Tom Rees. “The State Supreme Court told us we have to do this. I don’t really want to get into what I feel about it all. But I think you know,” Rees intimated to Bob Snyder of the Syracuse Herald-Journal. “We’ve got to make the best of a bad situation.”  

It was a situation which was obviously also disagreeable to Carmen Basilio. “I’m against it,” stated the Canastota born and bred two-division world champion, most famous for his pair of fifteen-round wars with Sugar Ray Robinson where they traded the middleweight title back and forth. “Everything’s equal rights nowadays. So why fight it? You’d just end up in the courts or in jail. But would you want to marry some woman who’s been punched in the head too many times?”

Twenty-six-year-old Diane Clark was born in Washington DC but relocated with her family to New York in her pre-teens, graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School and going on to study nursing at John Jay College. Her cousin was an amateur boxer and Clark would spar with him at home. It was with his encouragement that, after a year spent working as a nurse’s aide, she began seeking out a gym where she could train. “The first five I called said they wouldn’t, that they don’t train women,” said Diane, who wound up at the more welcoming confines of Gleason’s Gym, located then on 34^th Street, where she was put through her paces three hours a day, five times a week.

When the trainer who had originally agreed to work with Clark suddenly passed away, she was taken under the wing of Lee Black, a middleweight journeyman who boxed in the mid to late 40s and twice fought Jake LaMotta’s manager and little brother Joey. “Women are very vicious,” insisted Black. “Once in the ring, they may be a better show than the men.” Starting off at welterweight and gradually working her way up to light-heavy, Diane had been competing professionally for three years, mostly in Canada where it was easier to get fights. She compiled an 8-0-1 record along the way, up to and including her recent win over Jackie Tonawanda when she had stepped in as a last-minute replacement for Lillian ‘Wonder Woman’ Wells.

“I feel like we’re special. Before my first fight, I was scared, nervous. I didn’t know how people would take me,” confessed ‘Dynamite’ Diane. “But after, they asked for my autograph. Now they tell me to stay with it. I want to make this grow. If I was embarrassed, there’d be no sense going on.” Clark was hopeful but realistic about her future prospects as a prizefighter. “The commissioner said women may fight until the age of forty,” she said. “With me, if boxing doesn’t go international, maybe I’ll fight to thirty. Then go back to school.”        

All of the commotion surrounding the April 14 Diane Clark/Marge Golden matchup became an anticlimactically moot point when Golden’s pre-fight gynecological exam turned up an unspecified irregularity. With no time to scare up a substitute, Clark was left on the outside of the Syracuse War Memorial looking in. Nancy Sciacca, New York’s only female fight promoter at the time, seized the history-making opportunity and signed middleweights Gladys ‘Bam’ Smith and Toni ‘Leatherneck’ Tucker to square off against one another at the 369^th Regiment Armory in Harlem on July 16.

As her nickname suggests, the 24-year-old Tucker was a three-year veteran of the Marine Corps where she learned to box mostly by sparring with men. She enjoyed her overnight shift patrolling the IND Eighth Avenue subway line from 8pm til 2am as one of over 100 members of Curtis Sliwa’s crimefighting outfit the Magnificent 13, the predecessor to his Guardian Angels, often teaching Kungfu to her comrades.

“Boxing has more contact. Kungfu is more self-defense. You very rarely get to use it,” Tucker reasoned. “The only time I used it was on 42^nd Street. The men over there, they bother young ladies. I was attacked by a man. He wanted to take me to a motel. He kept pulling my arm and wouldn’t let go. So I took his hand and I swung his arm around and pulled it tight, so that if I pulled any tighter his elbow would break. Then he left me alone. He knew I meant business.” Curtis Sliwa knew it too after Toni got a little carried away when the director of the ABC YOU program wanted to see the two spar for the cameras while filming a segment on the Magnificent 13. “I knocked him down and there was blood,” Tucker recounted. “The director yelled, ‘Cut! Cut!’” Rather than get upset, Sliwa was impressed and promised Toni he would be attending her fight.   

A 21-year-old mother of two, Gladys Smith had belonged to a gang in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, meaning that her taste for fist-fighting was first acquired and satisfied on the streets. Trainer Hilliard Edmund took Smith on as a student at his 8^th Street Gym which had previously welcomed through its doors Newark native Marvin Hagler, Saoul Mamby, and Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, who at the time was still going by Eddie Gregory and, eight months away from unseating WBA world light-heavyweight champion Marvin Johnson, would be sharing the July 16 undercard in Harlem with Toni Tucker and Gladys Smith. Now that she was dedicated to carving out a better life for herself and her two young sons, Smith was optimistic that a victory over Tucker might inspire some of her friends still living the gang life to change their ways as well. Gladys’ good intentions notwithstanding, ‘Leatherneck’ Tucker promised, “I’m going to knock her block off.”

Dressed in camouflage pants, a white t-shirt emblazoned with the Magnificent 13 logo, and the organization’s trademark red beret, Tucker exhibited military-type punctuality by appearing for the weigh-in at the State Athletic Commission offices not one minute later than the appointed time of 11:30am, tipping the scales at 157 pounds. Her opponent, however, was missing in action and feared to be a no-show like she was for a fight in Nova Scotia a few months prior, an infraction that resulted, oddly enough, in the suspension not of Gladys Smith but her trainer Hilliard Edmund by the Nova Scotia Athletic Commission. Because of a mutual agreement between the two entities, the NYSAC would uphold Nova Scotia’s actions against Edmund and prevent him from working Smith’s corner, assuming she turned up at some point.

The suspense was brought to an end two hours later when Gladys finally materialized and weighed in at 160 on the nose. The gynecological exams performed on both Smith and Tucker came back clean and it looked like the fight was on. But no so fast. While Gladys Smith did indeed show up at the 369^th Regiment Armory, she left her mandatory breast protector back home in Newark. Without it she would not be allowed to enter the ring, so an anxiety-inducing round-trip from Harlem to Jersey was undertaken and completed with just twenty minutes to spare before bell time.       

2,500 fans filled the Armory to witness history in the making as Gladys ‘Bam’ Smith and Toni ‘Leatherneck’ Tucker stood in opposing corners, came to center ring for referee Billy Graham’s instructions, touched gloves, and commenced to swinging. Smith was the far busier, not to mention stronger, of the two from the outset, peppering Tucker with left/right combinations throughout the six 2-minute rounds. Surprisingly, fatigue seemed to set in rather quickly for Tucker, who could be seen rolling her mouthpiece around with her tongue from the second round on in an effort to clear passage for the intake of more air.

Her mouthpiece spilled out onto the canvas in the fourth and Toni fumbled around trying to clumsily pick it up and shove it back in with a gloved hand. Since referee Billy Graham neglected to call timeout to allow Tucker to get her bearings, Smith nailed her defenseless foe with three consecutive left hands. Tucker grabbed Gladys in a clinch, holding on for dear life in a desperate attempt to smother the attack. Admonished by the referee, who appeared to be on the verge of stopping the fight, Tucker protested to Graham, “All I’m trying to do is get my mouthpiece back.”

Tucker lasted the distance, but it was Gladys Smith who had her hands raised in victory, one of which grasped a small trophy that was presented to her after the decision was announced. “I have to get in shape,” admitted an overjoyed Smith, who also took home a $400 payout. “I want to fight again. I want to be the champion.”

Gladys’ trainer, Hilliard Edmund, opined, “For two girls, it was an even match. You never know until you get in the ring and now she knows she has to train harder.”

Jack Brami, the assistant matchmaker for Madison Square Garden, was on hand to conduct a scouting mission to find talent worthy of fighting in the world’s most famous arena. Asked whether he felt women qualified based on the bout he had just watched between Gladys Smith and Toni Tucker, Brami remained noncommittal. “Up until now, we have no interest,” he said. “What remains in the future, I don’t know.”

Only a clairvoyant could predict with any degree of accuracy that it would be seventeen years in the future before the Garden would host a women’s boxing match when Kathy Collins outpointed Andrea DeShong over six rounds on August 20, 1996.

To illustrate how far women’s boxing has evolved, we fast forward again to the present day in 2025 as Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano prepare to conclude their trilogy on July 11 right back where it started, at Madison Square Garden. Already having shattered MSG’s metaphorical glass ceiling by becoming the first women to headline the ‘Mecca of Boxing’ on April 30, 2022, this time they will be topping a bill of all-female bouts. 

 

Sources:

Female Boxers (New York Daily Herald, March 17, 1876)

Jackie Tonawanda To Defend Women’s Title (Macon Telegraph, February 15, 1979)

War Memorial Boxing Includes Female Debut (Binghamton Press and Bulletin, April 13, 1979)

Bob Snyder. Women’s Pro Boxing Bout KO’d by Physical Exam (Syracuse Herald-Journal, April 13, 1979)

‘Snyde’ Remarks (Syracuse Herald-Journal, April 14, 1979)

Aaron C. Elson. A Couple of Girls Ring in NYS History Tonight (New York Daily News, July 16, 1979)

Aaron C. Elson. Women’s Bout Nearly KO’d (New York Daily News, July 17, 1979)

N.Y. Hosts Its First Women’s Boxing Match (Central New Jersey Home News, July 17, 1979)

Aaron C. Elson. Bam Gets Nod Over Toni in 6 (New York Daily News, July 17, 1979)

Bob Straetz. It’s No Sport For Women (Poughkeepsie Journal, April 12, 1981)  

Julie Mullen: The 1970s ‘Girl Machine’ Who Manufactured KOs

Although she didn’t identify as a women’s-libber, power-punching welterweight Julie Mullen warned sportswriter Bill Conlin, who was preparing a feature on her for the Sacramento Bee in April 1978, “Don’t refer to me as a practitioner or a performer in the ‘Manly Art,’ because I know that’s one of your favorite expressions to describe boxing.” Conlin attempted to deflect Julie’s verbal jab by inquiring how she wished to be categorized. “Just say I’m ambitious and with a consuming desire to win the world championship and bring it to Sacramento,” Mullen countered. “I’m going for the title, and it will take somebody awfully strong to stop me.” Sporting a perfect record at the time this article was published consisting of six wins in as many months, with only two of those lasting until the final bell, it was a fool’s errand to argue with her. Julie Mullen had earned her assuredness in demonstrable fashion and in short order.

A self-defined “jock” since she was a young girl, Julie competed in track and field, softball, handball, and archery while coming of age in the old mining town of Virginia City, Nevada. Caroline Svendsen, the first woman to be granted a professional boxing license in the state of Nevada, also happened to call Virginia City home. Whether destiny or coincidence, it nevertheless set fire to Mullen’s imagination as to her own potential of becoming a prizefighter, and when Julie did decide to grab “a piece of the action,” in her own words, it would be under the guidance of Svendsen’s manager, Ted Walker.

The 20 year-old Mullen signed on the dotted line for her first fight on a card put together by renowned matchmaker Bill Dickson, who operated out of Gardnerville, to take place at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe on October 6, 1977. Julie dedicated her time not spent tending bar in Reno or pitching for a semi-pro softball team to boxing training, even benefitting from the opportunity to spar with junior-welterweight Harvey Arnold, who would be squaring off against Jose Hernandez in the ten-round main event. Phyllis Brueske, a 30 year-old “chip girl in a Gardena poker parlor” according to a newspaper writeup, was brought in by San Pedro-based boxing manager Dee Knuckles as a last-minute replacement for Julie’s original opponent, Dolly DuLove. Brueske was also a competitive runner, but there was nowhere for her to run from Mullen’s rocket launcher of a right hand which connected twice in quick succession within the first thirty seconds to put her down for the count administered by referee and former boxer Sammy Macias.

Mullen was back in action after a mere three weeks and she was intent on living up to her nickname, ‘Girl Machine,’ by making the turnaround time between her second and third fights significantly shorter than that. Forty-eight hours to be exact. First, Julie outpointed soon-to-be world junior-lightweight champion Toni Lear Rodriguez at the Carson City Community Center the day before Halloween to earn what the visiting fighter from Portland, Oregon complained was a “hometown split decision.” The 122-pound Lear wanted to prove herself so badly against the heavier Mullen that she later admitted to loading her pockets at the weigh-in to come as close to 140 as possible. “I had to take all kinds of chances,” Toni conceded. “You see, nobody in boxing had taken me seriously.” They would soon enough.

Nevada State Athletic Commission executive secretary Johnny ‘Mag’ Mangiaracina opted to waive their rule prohibiting boxers from reentering the prize ring less than three days after a four-round bout, clearing Julie to fight again November 1, this time opposite another Dee Knuckles protégé, the debuting Fonda Gayden, back at the familiar confines of the Hyatt Lake Tahoe. In his fight report, the Reno Gazette-Journal’s Steve Sneddon referred to Mullen as “the tomboy next door” who “combines an infectious girlish smile with a right hand which is almost lethal.” Like her sparring partner Phyllis Brueske before her, Gayden felt the full impact of Mullen’s hellacious right hand which detonated again and again on her chin for roughly three and a half minutes before reaching the conclusion that enough was enough and requesting that Sammy Macias stop the fight with a little less than forty seconds remaining of the second round.

“When I win, I’m happy. I’m full of happiness,” Julie told Sneddon when asked about her exuberant post-fight celebration. “When you get in the ring, you have doubts that you can win. When you hear your name announced as the winner, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.” The fact that Ted Walker signed her to a three-year managerial contract extension earlier that evening may have also contributed to Mullen’s giddy mood.

“I know she can fight better than she has shown,” Walker commented on Mullen’s occasionally flailing offensive attack against Gayden. To demonstrate that he was in no way damning her with faint praise, Walker insisted that “what she does in the gym now is what she’s going to be doing in the ring later.” Accordingly, Julie spent more than a month working diligently with Walker to improve her technique. “In a year and a half, she’ll be the best of the welterweight girls,” enthused her manager, pleased with Mullen’s progress in curtailing some of her reckless tendencies without sacrificing her killer instinct. “She even realizes it when she hurts me in the gym,” Walker continued. “Even fighting guys in the gym, she jumps on them. She hears that oomph and she goes after them.”     

On December 6, 1977 the Hyatt Lake Tahoe would play host to yet another night of boxing. But this was no ordinary, run of the mill event. For the first time ever, more than two women’s bouts would be contested on the same card as confirmed by matchmaker Bill Dickson. For those keeping score at home, there were four. The women’s prelims would follow two curtain-raising amateur fights and precede a ten-round main event, all featuring male boxers. Squeaky Bayardo decked Karen Bennett on three occasions before their bout was halted in the fourth and final round, Toni Lear Rodriguez won on points over Baby Bear James, Shirley ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker decisioned Fonda Gayden, and Julie Mullen notched her second consecutive stoppage (third in total) with a first-round knockout of novice Rochelle Johnson. After sending Johnson to the canvas for the second time with less than a minute elapsed, referee Curt Kinseth waved off the fight without the benefit of a count. “I knew my right hand was going to KO her,” boasted Mullen. “When I hit them with the right hand, I know I’m going to hurt them.”

Decorated amateur boxer and future world heavyweight champion Greg Page was in town to take part in the USA vs. Soviet Union Meet at the Las Vegas Hilton that weekend and sat ringside for fight night at the Hyatt. Unlike the majority of his teammates, Page was impressed by the women’s bouts and by Julie Mullen’s Sunday punch in particular. “A right hand on a girl like that. That’s something. I knew they could fight, but I didn’t know they had that much power,” said Page with Mullen standing within earshot. He then joked, “If she hit me, I would call the cops on her.”

Mullen’s January 12, 1978 scrap with Ruth Maynard, fighting out of Vancouver, Washington, was postponed when Julie came down with bronchitis and the makeup date was marked on the calendar for March 15. The setting? You guessed it, the Hyatt Lake Tahoe at Incline Village. Maynard’s only previous experience in the boxing ring was getting knocked out by Toni Lear Rodriguez back in December and she would fare no better against Mullen, preferring to remain on her stool after the third and penultimate round and have her lacerations tended to rather than come back out to absorb further punishment. She did manage to get in at least one good shot, however, according to Mullen. “She really rung my bell in that first round. It was a right hand counter that hurt me,” recounted Julie. “It shook my whole body. It made it tingle. That’s how I got this fat lip.”

Mary Kudla, a graduate student whose lifelong love of physical fitness dated back to happily performing childhood chores like milking cows on the family farm in Mosinee, Wisconsin, was next on Mullen’s agenda in the semi-windup bout at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe on April 4. Just one week earlier, Kudla had stepped in as a zero-hour substitute for Sue ‘KO’ Carlson’s originally scheduled opponent, bloodying the hometown favorite’s nose in the first stanza and capturing a four-round decision in only the second fight in Minnesota state history (Carlson had outpointed ‘Iron Maiden’ Bonnie Prestwood on January 23 at the Minneapolis Auditorium).

Mullen rocked Kudla with a pair of rights in the second round which typically signaled the beginning of the end for Julie’s adversaries, but a bloody Mary kept her composure and fought back admirably, turning the tables briefly in the third with a well-timed left hook. “That was a tough fight. That’s the first time I’ve fought somebody who really gave me a workout,” said Mullen, who indeed had her hands full fending off Kudla in a winning effort over four rounds. “She rung my bell two or three times, but I wasn’t going to give in.” This marked only the second time Julie had been taken the full distance and was described as a “wild battle” by the Nevada State Journal’s Steve Sneddon, who opined that Mullen and Kudla came close to upstaging the main event, an anticipated grudge match between super-lightweight rivals Jose Hernandez and Curtis Ramsey. A cut inside Julie’s bottom lip was severe enough to nearly require being sewn shut but not so much that it hindered her compulsive habit of chewing gum. She wouldn’t get off quite so lucky with her next medical mishap. And that one would occur not in the Hyatt Lake Tahoe ring, but in the streets of East Sacramento.  

Now ranked third by the WWBA in the welterweight division behind Dulce Lucas and Theresa ‘Princess Red Star’ Kibby and above Gwen Gemini and Sue Fox to round out the top five, Mullen decided on a change of scenery and relocated temporarily to Sacramento, intent on leveraging her record of 6-0 with 4 KOs into a title fight. In preparation, she worked out at the Sacramento PAL Gym at 3^rd and P Streets, sparring with local journeymen Babs McCarthy and ‘Pistol’ Pete Ranzany, who nearly made the 1972 Olympic squad but for a loss to eventual gold medalist Sugar Ray Seales in the semifinal round of the Trials. Like Ranzany and McCarthy, Julie was trained by Herman Carter, whose clientele at one time or another had also included the celebrated likes of Sandy Saddler, Cassius Clay, Joe Frazier, and Monroe Brooks to name a few.

Things were looking up for Mullen and she was booked for a match against newcomer Shirley Emerson of Watts as part of the July 3 Cow Pasture Boxing Festival in Gardnerville, Nevada. Fate, as it often does, had other plans. A baffling newspaper report by Bill Conlin in the July 17 edition of the Sacramento Bee stated that Julie had been hospitalized, needing 57 stitches to close wounds originating from putting her hand through the glass in a picture frame as well as an attack by a razor-wielding assailant while she was walking down the street. What the two incidents had to do with one another, if anything, how closely timewise each one occurred, and why she was evidently treated once and at the same time for both injuries are anybody’s guess. No further details were made available, other than that Mullen was fully healed and ready to take on Valerie Ganther (misidentified by Conlin as Janet Gaither) on July 22 in Truckee, California.

There was lost ground to be reclaimed, as Mullen had slipped to #5 in the welterweight rankings during her misadventures in Sacramento and it was doubtful that a four-round draw with Ganther, a 21-year-old full-contact karate competitor making her boxing debut, would help matters any. 500 fans turned out to the Tahoe-Truckee High School Surprise Stadium for the five-fight card which also featured Squeaky Bayardo winning a decision over Joann Williams. Uncharacteristic of Mullen’s fights, it was Ganther who emerged as the aggressor, landing left hooks in the first and second rounds that had Julie momentarily buzzed. Mullen managed to shake them off, but was seemingly unable to gain the upper hand until cracking Ganther with a short right hand in the final round.

Too little, too late, and Mullen was fortunate to walk away with a deadlock on the judges’ scorecards instead of an upset loss. “I was surprised. She punched harder than I thought. She’s the best puncher I’ve fought,” admitted Mullen. Nevertheless, she said of the decision, “I don’t like it. I thought I won it, maybe by a point.”

It goes without saying that Valerie Ganther and her team saw things from a different point of view. “We won the first two rounds, the third was even, and the other girl won the fourth,” stated Ganther’s manager, Hap Holloway. “The draw was my fault. I told her (Valerie) to coast in the fourth because we had the fight won.”

Mullen later confessed to being unsettled by recent events and that her focus wasn’t completely on the task at hand. “In that fight, my mental state wasn’t good,” she declared. “I was having personal problems. That was a mistake to let it bother me.”

Julie’s manager, Ted Walker, was able to find the silver lining woven through the otherwise dreary scenario. “It’s a blessing in disguise,” he said of the stalemate against Ganther. “It’s been hard to match her (Mullen). Now they’ll get off their high horses and fight us.” Walker’s optimism was put to the test when the lone challenge that had come along in the meantime, an August 5 fight against Las Vegas-based Charlene Anthony at the Spring Creek Sports Palace in Elko, Nevada, fell through at the last minute. It took an additional two and a half months, but the window of opportunity would open for Mullen in the familiar form of Toni Lear Rodriguez.     

One year to the day since their first meeting, Mullen and Rodriguez resumed hostilities for a non-title bout at the Carson City Community Center on October 30. Toni Lear had captured the vacant WWBA world junior-lightweight title back in January by beating Tansy ‘Baby Bear’ James in a rematch of their own. Mullen struggled down to 135 and still had a 13-pound advantage over Rodriguez, running her record to 2-0 against Toni Lear (7-0-1 overall) via unanimous decision despite having to shake off the cobwebs from absorbing a few flush right hands long the way. “I’m in a lot better shape now,” Julie testified afterwards. “I did my road work this time.” The ‘Girl Machine’ was confident that she had undergone the repairs necessary to set herself back on track, engines roaring and tires squealing toward a title shot looming just over the horizon. Mullen’s faith would soon be rewarded. Locally anyway.

Four women’s title fights headlined a Hyatt Lake Tahoe card on November 21, with Karen Bennett winning the world bantamweight championship courtesy of a second-round stoppage of Bonnie Prestwood in the main event. The other three female bouts would be contested for Nevada State titles. Ginate Troy was awarded the flyweight title by knocking out Laurie Ferris in the first round, and the lightweight title would go to Squeaky Bayardo, who outpointed Carlotta Lee. Lavonne Ludian, a Tahoe blackjack dealer and prizefighter who had competed against Theresa ‘Princess Red Star’ Kibby for the third time in the first women’s bout broadcast on national TV a year and a half prior, was something of an idol to Julie Mullen. Not only did Mullen put aside her hero worship of Ludian for the duration of their Nevada State welterweight championship match, she put Lavonne down on the canvas twice in the fourth round with a pair of left/right combinations and was awarded the TKO victory.     

“She is probably one of the best women fighters in the world. She had the publicity. I was just excited to fight her. I didn’t realize that I hit her that hard. I was afraid when I saw her go down,” said Julie, referring to the first knockdown when Ludian landed headfirst. “I didn’t want to hurt her. She is a real nice lady.” Even if only regional in nature, Mullen had finally attained championship status and was still hopeful that worldwide recognition as the best female welterweight in boxing was soon to follow.

Instead, Mullen found herself in Billings, Montana on April 7, 1979 to compete in that city’s inaugural women’s bout opposite Jennie O’Brien, a 34-year-old pro wrestler who was filling in for the absent Sandy Parker. Only 3,200 of the Metra Center’s 9,000 seats were occupied by fight fans witnessing this historic first and, although “the welcome in Billings for the most part, was friendly” remarked John Blanchette writing for The Billings Gazette, the women were greeted by predictably bad behavior from at least a portion of the predominantly male crowd who viewed their bout as a novelty. Some wiseguy suggested not so subtly to O’Brien during a break in the action in round one, “Get a hormone test!” Another smart aleck felt compelled to shout “Atta boy!” at Mullen whenever she pressed the advantage.

Bystanders impatient for the conclusion of the women’s scrap wouldn’t be left waiting long. The very first punch of the fight from Mullen was thrown with such authority that referee Dick Weinhold administered a standing-eight count to O’Brien. This set the tone for how the remainder of the contest played out. Two times in the next round Mullen pummeled O’Brien into the ropes, the second occasion resulting in another standing-eight from the ref. Julie deposited O’Brien onto the canvas with a right hand to the midsection in the opening moments of round three. Forty-five seconds later, it was all she wrote for O’Brien after another body blow by Mullen created an opening for a pair of vicious head shots. Dick Weinhold put a stop to the carnage at 1:10 of the third round with O’Brien laid out at his feet. “Hi, baby!” a voice in the crowd yelled to the victorious Mullen as she made her way through the arena back to the dressing room.

“There isn’t much you can say about a fight like that. It wasn’t a very good fight. She was just very easy to hit,” assessed Mullen. “I wanted it to be a good, hard six rounds for myself, for a workout. But it’s another KO for my record—that’s six now,” she tallied. “I’ve gotten a good fan following. The audience is what gets me going. If they’re good, I’ll have a good fight.”

“It’s not bad, but it’s not my sport,” confided Jennie O’Brien, whose boxing career would amount to one and done. “If people offer me money, I’ll fight. But I like wrestling better. I like the body contact and being in complete control of my body. I don’t feel that way with boxing gloves on. Plus, in the last ten years, I’ve been to Australia twice, Japan eight times, Indonesia, all over Canada. I’ve seen a lot.” 

As was customary early on for Mullen, she had already signed up for another fight to follow hot on the heels of the previous one and she would return to Nevada for what would be her seventh and final appearance at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe just five days removed from her knockout of Jennie O’Brien in Billings. Another common theme throughout Julie’s boxing odyssey was having to contend with no-shows and replacement opponents. This would be no exception.

Not much was known at the time about 18-year-old Britt VanBuskirk, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. It turns out she would be a considerable trade-up from Mullen’s originally scheduled opponent, the even more enigmatic JoJo Crummens. With only two bouts in Japan on her résumé to that point, one of which was a boxer versus kickboxer exhibition, it would have been easy to look past Britt. But it would also have been folly to do so. Looks, as they say, can be deceiving and VanBuskirk, built like the female version of Thomas Hearns with her tall, lanky frame and a right hand capable of bringing down a brick wall, may have been an unknown quantity but was not to be underestimated. Which is not to suggest that was the mindset of Mullen, whose own deadly weapon was her right hand as well. This made it a question of who could pull the trigger quicker. VanBuskirk provided the answer in the second round, putting Julie down and out with an explosive right behind her long left jab.  

Looking to rebound from suffering her first defeat, a knockout at the hands of a relative novice no less, Mullen took a confidence-building fight against a pugilistic greenhorn in Bernice Ford of Sacramento, scheduled to take place on June 16 at a makeshift 1,200-seat bleacher stadium set up in a parking lot on Yerington, Nevada’s Main Street. Ford was nowhere to be found come fight night and Julie had to settle for boxing a four-round no-decision exhibition with another newbie by the name of Judie James, who Mullen outweighed by twelve pounds.  

On September 18 at the Shy Clown Casino, located on the corner of Glendale and Rock in Sparks, Mullen was supposed to have squared off against “The Famous Rowdy Rebecca Johnson,” as advertised in the Nevada State Journal the day before. For reasons unknown, that matchup was scratched from the card and Julie would not re-enter a boxing ring again until she pounded out a six-round decision over first-timer Blanca Rodriguez in Carson City on February 18, 1980.

“I could’ve taken her out in any of the rounds, but I was rusty,” bemoaned a disappointed Mullen. Her first official fight in almost a year since being stopped by Britt VanBuskirk would also prove to be her last, and one can only speculate what became of her after this, as ‘The Girl Machine’ Julie Mullen lived from that day forward free from the scrutiny of the public eye.  

  

Sources:  

Media News Release: Boxing…Hyatt Lake Tahoe Thursday October 6, 1977 (supplied by Sue Fox)

Prelims (Sacramento Bee, October 6, 1977)

Steve Sneddon. ‘Sad Boy’ Beats Arnold at Hyatt (Nevada State Journal, October 7, 1977)

Steve Sneddon. Ramsey Upsets Arnold (Reno Gazette-Journal, October 31, 1977)

Mullen’s Fight Upstages Good Incline Main Event (Reno Gazette-Journal, November 1, 1977)

Steve Sneddon. Mullen’s Lethal Right Produces Ring Victory (Reno Gazette-Journal, November 2, 1977)

Women Boxers To Make History (Reno Gazette-Journal, November 29, 1977)

Steve Sneddon. Women Fighters Impress Top Men (Reno Gazette-Journal, December 7, 1977)

Ramsey, Hernandez Highlight Fight Card (Reno Gazette-Journal, January 12, 1978)

John Nolen. Lear—Portland’s World Boxing Champ (Oregon Journal, January 17, 1978)

Mike Blackwell. Young Robby Epps Flashes Championship Form (Reno Gazette-Journal, March 16, 1978)

Bill Henson. O’Connor Beaten Before He Climbed in Ring (Minneapolis Star, March 28, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Hernandez Turns Puncher To Score Grudge Victory. (Nevada State Journal, April 5, 1978)

Bill Conlin. A New Welter on the Scene (Sacramento Bee, April 10, 1978)

Gardnerville July 3 Boxing Card Listed (Nevada State Journal, June 11, 1978)

Bill Conlin. Streets Make Ring Look Safe (Sacramento Bee, July 17, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Girl Machine Mullen Settles For a Draw (Nevada State Journal, July 23, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Inspiring Main Event on Elko Fight Card (Reno Gazette-Journal, August 4, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Sellout Expected for Nevada Day Eve Boxing Card (Reno Gazette-Journal, October 30, 1978)

Austin Earns His Bread the Hard Way (Reno Gazette-Journal, October 31, 1978)

Women Battling for Titles (Reno Gazette-Journal, November 16, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Hard-Punching Bennett Stops Prestwood (Nevada State Journal, November 22, 1978)

Girl Machine to Fight (Nevada State Journal, April 6, 1979)

Dave Trimmer. Castillo Does His Bit for Billings Boxing (Billings Gazette, April 7, 1979)

John Blanchette. Gals’ Bout Still Novelty to Fight Fans (Billings Gazette, April 8, 1979)

Frank Dell’apa. Boxer’s Fast Start in Pros (Reno Gazette-Journal, April 13, 1979)

Giron Faces Tougher Foe (Reno Gazette-Journal, June 13, 1979)

Steve Sneddon. Giron Changes Sides, Wins with Knockout (Nevada State Journal, June 17, 1979)

Live Professional Boxing (Nevada State Journal, September 17, 1979)

Boxing (Nevada State Journal, February 19, 1980)

Mary J. Kudla Obituary. (Co-Op Funeral Home, December 2, 2018) 

From the Madhouse to Muldoon’s House: Nellie Bly’s Visit with John L. Sullivan

Nellie Bly arrived in New York City in 1887 out of work, out of money, and about to accept an assignment for which she had to pretend to be out of her mind.

As groundbreaking an opportunity as it was for an investigative journalist and social activist, hers was no task for the faint of heart. Nellie, however, was up to the challenge, having boldly penned her first published piece for the Pittsburgh Dispatch at the age of 16 in response to a chauvinistic article called “What Girls Are Good For” and later spent six months in Mexico chronicling the miserable living conditions of the general population suffering under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.    

Unafraid in the face of risk or controversy, the twenty-three-year-old Bly (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran) was asked by an editor for the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer’s prestigious daily newspaper, to gain admittance to and write an undercover expose of the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island with its famous tramway linking it to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “I said I could and I would,” Nellie wrote in the opening lines of Ten Days in a Madhouse, serialized in sell-out editions of the World and subsequently published in book form. “And I did.”

After her week and a half-long dealings with the deranged patients “whose tongues uttered meaningless nonsense” and unsympathetic psychiatric staff responsible for the “cruel treatment of the poor things intrusted[sic] to their care” in the dark, dingy confines of the foreboding brick structure at Blackwell’s Island, traveling to the bucolic setting of upstate Belfast, New York two years later to conduct an interview with the hard-drinking, womanizing prizefighter who boasted that he could “lick any sonofabitch in the house” must have seemed like a working vacation by comparison. And to Ms. Bly, as a matter of fact, more accommodating Mr. Sullivan and his host William Muldoon could not have been. “If John L. Sullivan isn’t able to whip any pugilist in the world,” she claimed for the lead-in to her article, “I would like to see the man who is.”

‘The Boston Strong Boy,’ not unlike Nellie Bly except for the reasons why, was in need of professional guidance and financial assistance when he too staggered into Manhattan. Though he would have been loath to admit it, what John L. Sullivan required most was some tender loving care (more like tough love) pertaining to the personal and physical aspects of his being, ravaged as it was by his rough and tumble profession, an abominable diet, flagrant abuse of intoxicants, and a recent, nearly fatal malady.

John L. himself described the terrible affliction which confined him to bed for nine weeks beginning in August 1888 as “typhoid fever, gastric fever, inflammation of the bowels, heart trouble, and liver complaint all combined.” Twice given up for dead by flummoxed physicians, it was considered something of a minor miracle that the thirty-year-old Sullivan survived, albeit his recovery was begun hobbling about on crutches for six weeks due to a resulting bout of what he termed “incipient paralysis.”

Before he had even approached anything resembling full recuperation, John L. issued an open challenge to Jake Kilrain on December 7, 1888. A month later, Sullivan met with Kilrain’s backers in Toronto to sign the official articles of agreement for a July 8 bareknuckle brawl which was to be the last heavyweight championship match contested under the London Prize Ring Rules. Additionally, Sullivan had reverted almost immediately back to the detrimental habits that had contributed mightily to his pitiable condition, chasing as many steaks as he could devour in one sitting with whiskey served in beer steins. His training regimen, if you could consider it that, consisted mainly of vigorous walks followed by a rubdown and a three-hour nap. He also planned to set out on an ill-advised exhibition tour which would bring him right into Richburg, Mississippi on the day of the Kilrain fight.

This was serious cause for concern in the eyes of Sullivan’s handlers. That May, according to R.F. Dibble’s 1925 book on John L. entitled An Intimate Narrative, Sullivan was “howling and teetering around a New York hotel bar” just as “Jimmy Wakely, his present manager, entered with William Muldoon.”   

Most famous for his exploits as a Greco-Roman wrestler, Muldoon boasted an extraordinarily diverse and extensive resume with job titles such as farmer, wood splitter, Civil War cavalryman, Indian War soldier, warehouse loader, dock worker, cart driver, police officer, actor, and owner of a “saloon and reading room,” although he soon divorced himself from this last business venture due to the fact that he was by all accounts a no-nonsense teetotaler who personally abstained from and generally abhorred tobacco and hard liquor. In his Sullivan biography John the Great, Donald Barr Chidsey paints Muldoon in the colorless guise of one “who lived always as though tomorrow would be Judgment Day.”

Muldoon later stated, “This man Sullivan was a drunken, bloated helpless mass of flesh and bone without a single dollar in his pocket when I took him from New York to my place.” While Michael Isenberg suggests in John L. Sullivan and His America (1988) that Muldoon might have first met Sullivan on an 1880 trip to Boston, one certainty is that he staged the March 31, 1881 fight between John L. and Steve Taylor at Harry Hill’s in New York City. It appears as though another of Muldoon’s entrepreneurial endeavors was having built “rings for occasional clandestine bareknuckle bouts” which brought about a promotional opportunity in the expanding universe of prizefighting. Sullivan and Muldoon were, like it or not, about to become much more intimately acquainted.

“We had a little misunderstanding, but after a day we were led to bury the hatchet.” This was how John L. Sullivan chose to gloss over, in his memoirs, the almost constant friction between himself and his strict taskmaster who allegedly took the precaution of issuing sternly worded warnings to local bartenders and druggists that under no circumstance were they to cater to the champion’s urges. The ‘Boston Strong Boy,’ naughty as he was resourceful, still found a way to break camp on a number of occasions, including a brief rendezvous with the popular singer and “burlesque queen” Ann Livingston.

The gregarious John L. Sullivan rarely encountered a correspondent he didn’t like. He once went so far as to exclaim, “These young newspapermen are alright to me. I’m for ‘em!” Little Carrie author Theodore Dreiser was a beat reporter for the St. Louis Globe as a young man when he was tasked with interviewing Sullivan who urged him to “Write any damned thing yuh please, young fella. If they don’t believe it, bring it back here and I’ll sign it for yuh. But I know it’ll be alright, and I won’t stop to read it either.”    

William Muldoon, on the other hand, was suspicious of reporters and undesirous of non-essential visitors who would only serve to further distract the already restless Sullivan. It was rumored that he rented every room in the one and only nearby hotel and barred journalists from his premises except for Ban Johnson, the future founder and first president of professional baseball’s American League. If so, Johnson was not the lone exception to Muldoon’s rule regarding privacy from the press. 

Nellie Bly’s train pulled into the Belfast station at 7:30 in the morning, she and her unnamed companion the only passengers to disembark there. The descriptive power inherent to Nellie’s prose comes through as she gives her first impression of Champion Rest, the home of William Muldoon which Bly notes “is surrounded by two graveyards, a church, the priest’s home and a little cottage occupied by two old maids.” She is immediately struck by the fact that “One would never imagine from the surrounding that a prizefighter was being trained there. The house is a very pretty little two-story building, surrounded by the smoothest and greenest of green lawns, which helps to intensify the spotless whiteness of the cottage. A wide veranda surrounds the three sides of the cottage and the easy chairs and hammocks give it a most enticing look of comfort. Large maple trees shade the house from the glare of the sun.”

After being greeted at the door by who she refers to simply as a “colored man,” Nellie is taken to meet Muldoon, with his blue eyes and a smile that “brought two dimples to punctuate his rosy cheeks,” who informed her that Sullivan was in the midst of a rubdown following their two-mile walk but that he would promptly fetch him for her. “He was a tall man, with enormous shoulders and wore dark trousers, a light cheviot coat and vest and slippers,” Nellie remarked of the individual who she would have failed to recognize as “the great and only Sullivan” if not for Muldoon’s introduction. “In his hand he held a light cloth cap. He paused almost as he entered the room in a half-bashful way, and twisted his cap in a very boyish but not ungraceful manner.”

After an amiable handshake “with a firm hearty grasp and with a hand that felt small and soft,” John L. walked Nellie quickly through his daily workout routine, not only patiently explaining to his curious guest the benefits of the corduroy “sweater” he wore on his early morning runs and walks with Muldoon, but showing her the very “heavy knit garment” he owned “with long sleeves and a standing collar.”

Sullivan let his guard down around Nellie and, asked his feelings about training, confessed that “it’s the worst thing going.” He grumbled to her as well about the fact that “I couldn’t sleep after 5 o’clock this morning on account of Mr. Muldoon’s cow. It kept up a hymn all the morning and the birds joined in the chorus. It’s no use to try to sleep here after daybreak. The noise would knock out anything.” Evidently the peace and quiet suited Sullivan well enough during the day but was simply too much for a night owl such as himself to handle. “It’s all right to be here when the sun is out, but after dark it’s the dreariest place I ever stuck,” he told Nellie. “I wouldn’t live here if they gave me the whole country.” 

In his first effort to put the champion through his paces, and perhaps humble him in the bargain, William Muldoon had sent John L. to labor in the fields alongside the other farmhands which, needless to say, did not make for a reciprocally agreeable situation. No advocate of heavy weightlifting, Muldoon had Sullivan work instead with dumbbells of varying size to sculpt lean muscle and swinging Indian clubs for increased flexibility and agility. Initially, John L. had been barely able to maintain a dozen repetitions while jumping rope but became so proficient week after painstaking week that accomplishing 900 successful skips was not out of the question.

Muldoon routinely incorporated wrestling into their sessions, the master grappler imparting a good deal of his vast knowledge onto his student so that John L. could more effectively close the distance on Kilrain and roughhouse the challenger. The two would also toss back and forth a medicine ball (an invention credited to Muldoon) that Nellie Bly mentioned as being “enormous and so heavy that when Mr. Muldoon dropped it into my arms, I almost toppled over.”   

Football was another daily form of exercise, as was alternating between hitting the heavy bag and the smaller one suspended from an exposed ceiling beam in the barn which Sullivan attacked with a wild abandon that Nellie supposed “foretells hard times for Kilrain’s head.”

To help keep Sullivan limber, Muldoon encouraged him to go swimming although Allegany County was affected, as were many surrounding areas of Pennsylvania and western New York, by the runoff of the Johnstown flood. Sullivan recalled in his memoirs, “The river running through Belfast was filled with debris from all the upper country, and was quite a sight to see.”

A local hangabout identified in Sullivan’s autobiography as “Lauk” was swept away while attempting to navigate through the falls or over a dam where “his body was found some miles below.” This didn’t stop John L. from plunging one day into the raging rapids after one of Muldoon’s English Mastiffs and colliding with a large rock beneath the surface. The direct point of impact was one of his shins which had been spiked by Charlie Mitchell and never healed properly.  

Nellie’s query as to whether he liked prizefighting elicited another candid confession from Sullivan. “I don’t,” he replied. “I did once, or rather I was fond of traveling about and the excitement of the crowds.” He then tells Bly “this is my last fight.” Pressed for an explanation, John L. responded, “Well, I am tired and I want to settle down. I am getting old.” By his own accounting, he made somewhere around $600,000 over his career but admitted, “I have been a fool and today I have nothing. It came easy and went easy.” But not all of Sullivan’s earnings were casually pissed away on whiskey and women. “I have provided well for my father and mother, and they are in very comfortable circumstances.” Asked how he might adjust to retirement, Sullivan mused, “I think I shall spend the rest of my life as a hotel proprietor.”

Nellie remarked to John L. that “Your hands look very soft and small for a fighter.” Sullivan, seemingly charmed by this observation, replied, “My friends tell me they look like hams.” Before detailing the composition of rock salt, white wine, and vinegar with which he scrubbed his face and hands, he insisted that Bly feel his arm, a recommendation she is happy to comply with. “I tried to feel the muscle, but it was like a rock,” she would write. “With both my hands, I tried to span it, but I couldn’t. Meanwhile, the great fellow sat there watching me with a most boyish expression of amusement.” 

Having outlined for Nellie the disparity between fights conducted under London Prize Ring Rules as opposed to those endorsed by the Marquis of Queensbury, Sullivan delighted in the fact that he was permitted to strike “any place above the belt that I get a chance” and brushed aside Bly’s question regarding concern for his adversary by stating matter-of-factly, “I don’t think about it. I never feel sorry until the fight is over.”  

Suppertime arrived and, rather than being asked to please excuse herself, Nellie was extended the courtesy of an invitation to break bread with them. Once again, her recall and attention to detail in relating the contrast between her roughhewn hosts and their surprisingly civilized habitat are astonishing. “At a nearer view the dining room did not lose any of its prettiness and the daintiness of everything-the artistic surroundings, the noiseless and efficient colored waiter, the open windows on both sides giving pretty views of the green lawns and shady trees; the canary birds swelling their yellow throats occasionally with sweet little trills, the green parrot climbing up its brass cage and talking about crackers, the white table linen and beautiful dishes, down to the large bunch of fragrant lilacs and another beautifully shaped and colored wild flowers, separated by a slipper filled with velvety pansies-was all entirely foreign to any idea I had ever conceived of prizefighters and their surroundings.”

Muldoon and Sullivan then escorted Nellie along a guided tour of Champion Rest which took them through the horse stalls and the barn house converted into a gymnasium and concluded in the downstairs den where she mentally catalogued the “photographs of well-known people and among them several of Modjeska, with whom Mr. Muldoon at one time traveled.” Helena Modjeska was a glamorous Polish actress who was so smitten with Muldoon upon first sight that she personally arranged for him to undertake the role of Charles the Wrestler to her Rosalind (with Maurice Barrymore, a former boxer and patriarch of the famous family of actors, as Orlando) in an 1883 production of the Shakespearean comedy As You Like It.

Bly additionally recorded, “There are also a number of photographs of Mr. Muldoon in positions assumed in posing as Greek statues. On a corner table are albums filled with photographs of prominent athletes, and scrapbooks containing hundreds of notices of Champion Muldoon’s athletic conquests. Then there are a number of well-bound standard works and the photographs of Mr. Muldoon’s favorite authors-Bryant, Longfellow and, I believe, Shakespeare.”

Referring to the personal expenditures involved in running a training headquarters, Muldoon indicated to Nellie that “I make no money by this.” His assertion conflicts with the less philanthropic version of the story given by Donald Barr Chidsey in John the Great wherein Sullivan’s manager Jimmy Wakely and Charley Johnston, a restaurant owner who was Sullivan’s main money man, jointly offer Muldoon $10,000 to take the unhealthy and uncouth John L. up to his sleepy little village of Belfast and somehow whip him into shape for the Kilrain fight. As told by Chidsey, Muldoon not only consented but said he would accept payment only if Sullivan were victorious. Pertaining especially to a larger-than-life public figure like John L. Sullivan, contemporary readings of antiquated biographies are entertaining but need to be taken with the requisite grain of salt.

Before parting ways, John L. confidentially disclosed to Nellie, “You are the first woman who ever interviewed me. And I have given you more than I ever gave any reporter in my life.” What Nellie Bly gave back was an articulate and richly detailed story which would prop open for women the previously blockaded door into sports writing (boxing, specifically) through which Djuna Barnes would follow soon after.

Hailing from the ominously-named New York town of Storm King Mountain (which sounds like something out of Tolkien), Barnes would unleash throughout her 90 years on earth a journalistic tempest with such quirky and controversial Jazz Age works as The Book of Repulsive Women and Ladies Almanack as well as her celebrated 1936 novel Nightwood. Djuna filed a stunningly-composed report for Nellie’s former employer The New York World in 1914 headlined “My Sisters and I at a New York Prizefight" after attending an evening of bouts in Far Rockaway and followed up with exclusives entitled “Jess Willard Says Girls Will Be Boxing For a Living Soon” and “Jack Dempsey Welcomes Women Fans,” both based on private interviews with the current heavyweight champions.  

Enter Margery Miller who, reading The Ring magazine while the other kids in Springfield, Vermont were probably preoccupied by comic strips, grew up a boxing fan just like her father with whom she traveled to Yankee Stadium in 1938 to witness Joe Louis historically avenge his prior loss to Max Schmeling. So enamored was she with ‘The Brown Bomber’ that Louis was chosen as the subject of Margery’s senior year thesis at Massachusetts’ Wellesley College. Her paper was submitted to A.A. Wyn and accepted for publication by Current Books in 1945 as Joe Louis: American before she had even graduated, making Margery’s volume one of the earliest Louis biographies. Miller’s book was favorably reviewed by Ring magazine founder and editor Nat Fleischer, to whom it was dedicated, and Eleanor Roosevelt is said to have stayed up half the night reading it.

Nicknamed ‘Cauliflower’ by her college classmates and having once described her physical stature to an enquiring reporter as “a flyweight,” Margery was subsequently brought in on the ground floor as a staff writer for Sports Illustrated, producing for the fledgling publication’s introductory issue its very first boxing article, a short feature on Rocky Marciano.

Who can forget, in today’s Trumped-up culture with its ridiculous efforts to define and validate “locker room talk,” Mike Tyson’s bizarre and disturbing comment to a female reporter who dared to break in with a question that “I normally don’t do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them. So, you shouldn’t talk anymore unless you want to…you know.” The chivalrous Joe Louis had a very different attitude toward the matter, relaying an open invitation to be conveyed to Margery after their first encounter: “You tell Miss Miller that if she will call me in advance, I’ll be sure to be wearing my terrycloth robe and she can come back anytime.”  

Ruminating on what was commonly referred to during her era as “the manly art,” even Nellie Bly seemed to have been inclined toward the view that females were somehow genetically precluded from participating in rough stuff. “I have often thought that the sparring instinct is inborn-in everything-except women and flowers,” she wrote in A Visit with John L. Sullivan. “Almost as soon as a boy learns to walk, he learns to jump into position of defense and double up his fists.” These thoughts seem curious emanating from a progressive-minded woman whose body could hardly contain the bold and adventurous spirit which led her Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, her nearly 25,000-mile journey besting Jules Verne’s optimistically make-believe contrivance by eight days.

Almost a full century later, Joyce Carol Oates advanced these views (or dragged them further backward, if you will) when she wrote, “Raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the province of women. The female boxer violates this stereotype and cannot be taken seriously-she is parody, she is cartoon, she is monstrous.” 

Women’s boxing, illegal and certainly regarded as “monstrous,” was forced to exist in the 19th Century on the outermost fringes of prizefighting, which was generally scoffed at by the moral majority as a brutish and sinful pastime as it was. Yet exist it did. Two prominent female fighters of the day were Hattie Stewart and Hattie Leslie, who were not only identifiable by their shared first name but a common moniker. The Female John L. Sullivan.

In 2014, Hattie, Hattie and Nellie were inducted into the Bareknuckle Boxing Hall of Fame which resides conveniently within the refurbished barns at Champion Rest in Belfast. Its former occupant, William Muldoon, was enshrined in the BKBHOF’s inaugural Class of 2009 along with his one-time problem child, the ‘Boston Strong Boy’ John L. Sullivan.

Sources:

Nellie Bly. Ten Days in a Madhouse (Ian L. Munro, 1887)

Nellie Bly. A Visit with John L. Sullivan (1889) 

Donald Barr Chidsey. John the Great (Doubleday, 1942)

R. F. Dibble. John L. Sullivan: An Intimate Narrative (Little Brown and Co., 1925)

John L. Sullivan (edited and with an afterword by Gilbert Odd). I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House (Proteus Books, 1979)