Joanne Metallo Hits the Rewind Button on a Boxing Life Lived in Fast Forward

“I don’t brag. I don’t lie.”

Joanne Metallo, one of the many unfortunately unknown female prizefighters of the 1980s, made sure to emphasize the power and permanence of her moral code after telling me that she earned the nickname ‘Nonstop’ because of how often peers would remark to her that she boxed “like a movie in fast forward.”

She made a regular habit of roughing up, or at the very least holding her own against, male sparring partners, was once ranked #2 in the world, and earned the right to what should have been three world title shots. Denied two of these pivotal opportunities by essentially being too tough for her own good during sparring sessions with the would-be defending champions, Metallo was further hamstrung by her refusal, based on the personal principle that “my body is my temple,” to submit to what she believed to be unnecessarily invasive pre-fight physical exams. Subsequently, she was confined to the margins or footnotes of boxing’s history books, if not absent from them altogether. Until now.

Growing up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Joanne describes her young self as a “hyperactive kid” and “a tomboy” but says that she was not terribly athletic. This was mostly due to the fact that, in her gym class, pretty much the only physical activities she and her classmates would be encouraged to participate in were to “square dance or kick around a medicine ball.” 

Left to her own devices, the rambunctious Metallo would work off some of her nervous energy and adolescent angst by getting into street fights, all of which she would win. Joanne and a neighborhood boy named George Langer would meet up once a week to bust each other up until they were both black and blue. She did, however, meet her match in the family’s pet spider monkey, Georgie. Becoming increasingly unpredictable and unruly over time, Georgie bit Joanne on four different occasions and eventually had to be sent away after clawing at her eyes, scratching the lids.

In 1975, after moving to Easton, Pennsylvania, Metallo began competing in karate tournaments every Saturday, achieving a second-degree black belt under the tutelage of the renowned Grand Master Al Smith. She handed unbeaten Pearl Brown her first defeat in the finals of a non-contact point kumite tournament, taking the defending champion’s title in the process. Specializing in the disciplines of full-contact and point kumite, weapons, and breaking, Joanne won what she estimates to be very nearly 5,000 trophies over a ten-year period.

She transitioned to amateur kickboxing and broke her opponent’s ribs with a left hook in her very first match. Joanne main evented every one of her bouts in Easton or nearby Allentown and Bethlehem, some of which were contested against men. Joanne is proud of the close connection she formed within the black communities of Maryland and Washington DC, especially enjoying being taken out for spiced crabs which quickly became her favorite dish. 

Earnie Butler fought as a welterweight in the 1950s and, well before the autumn of 1982 when Joanne Metallo first showed up at his door, the 58-year-old coach had been mentoring aspiring prizefighters out of St. Anthony’s Gym. Future world heavyweight titleholder Larry Holmes had been a young protégé of Butler’s before parting ways with the self-professed “maker of champions” to forward his lofty career aspirations.

“Earnie helped me out. He taught me in the gym,” Holmes said in 1984. “He took me to meet Muhammad Ali in 1971 and that was how I got to be Muhammad Ali’s sparring partner. But, as time goes by, you move on. Earnie didn’t have the connections.” Understandably stung by being cut out of the picture by Holmes, Butler nevertheless insisted that they had remained friends, and the hometown heavyweight champion would continue to stop by St. Anthony’s from time to time. 

Earnie would hand out business cards which read, “If you can take discipline and hard knocks, Earnie Butler will teach you how to box.” No stranger to hard knocks, Joanne Metallo eagerly accepted Butler’s challenge. To put Metallo to the test, Butler threw her in the ring with Derrick Parks to see what she could do with the Golden Gloves champion who Larry Holmes was working with toward the potential goal of making the Olympic boxing squad. Joanne told me she beat Parks up so badly that “he didn’t talk to me for three months.”

This was all the convincing Earnie needed. “I don’t treat her any different than my other boxers. I don’t worry about her. Hell, she’s sparring with boys. She’s doing fine,” he boasted to an enquiring reporter. Metallo had also cut up welterweight prospect Chester Baxter in a brutal sparring session.

“Joanne surprised me in a lot of ways,” Butler elaborated. “I didn’t think she’d stick it out or be as tough as she was. But the more often she came to the gym, the more interest I took in her. I wish some of my male boxers were as sincere and dedicated as she is.”

Metallo’s first professional boxing match was a November 1982 win over Bitzy Blair in the nation’s capital. She said that Bitzy had a “wicked overhand right” and “screamed at me when I stepped on her foot.” Cora Wiles, the boxing commissioner for Washington DC, agreed to let Joanne bypass the customary medical exam under the condition that she instead present a release form signed by her personal physician affirming that she was fit to fight.

Fighting out of Easton, Pennsylvania and weighing in at 120 pounds, with a record of one win and no defeats, Joanne Metallo was moments away from engaging in the very first women’s boxing match contested in the state of Maryland in front of 1,400 spectators at the Baltimore Civic Center on May 5, 1983. Across the ring from Joanne, occupying the opposing corner, stood Doreen Lefeged. All six-feet of her, and then some.

Lefeged, who they called ‘Brown Sugar,’ had been a hoops star at the University of Maryland where, in 1978, she and the lady Terrapins beat the North Carolina Tar Heels to win the first ever women’s ACC tournament. Before she gravitated toward boxing, Lefeged was scouted by the Houston Angels of the Women’s Professional Basketball League, a predecessor to the WNBA of today. By contrast, Metallo, who indulged admittedly unrealistic dreams as a young girl of becoming a basketball star herself, was a mere five-foot-two. When they came toe to toe, the size differential was almost comical.

Both women were 26 years of age, but that’s where the similarities began and ended. Besides her significant height advantage, Lefeged also outweighed Metallo by twenty pounds. Joanne recalls Lefeged being “super strong” but toughed out a four-round draw with her regardless. “This is not a dance. This is a fight,” a disgruntled Earnie Butler admonished Metallo afterwards in the damp, humid locker room down in the bowels of the Civic Center. “I want you in the gym tomorrow.”

Metallo and Lefeged were paired up in a rematch five months later in Washington DC. “Three commissions met at the fight with Doreen Lefeged and said in the physical room I can fight but the only way I’ll win is if I get a knockout,” Metallo recalls. “I said ok, because Doreen got a physical and I would not let them check my breasts. I can’t do that. I fight with my gloves, not with my tits!”

Joanne remembers that, by the end of their four-rounder, Doreen was “bleeding like hell” but finished the fight on her feet which put Metallo in a no-win scenario and left Commissioner Cora Wiles little other choice than to disqualify her for refusing the pre-fight physical.

Her rough and tumble scraps with Doreen Lefeged resulted directly in a scary incident which played out in Virginia while Metallo was being introduced to the crowd before squaring off against Betty ‘Mean Jean’ Garner. She remembers jumping up and down in her corner as the ring announcer called out her name, and that is all she remembers between then and when she regained consciousness soon after.

She immediately jumped to the logical conclusion that she had gotten knocked out, only to be informed by Earnie Butler that Betty Garner never even got the chance to lay a glove on her. Impossible as this was for her to believe, Butler told Joanne that she had dropped to the canvas during the ring introductions and gone into seizures. Ringside spectators and Betty herself, with whom Metallo stayed for one week after the fight in Garner’s Washington DC apartment, confirmed that this was in fact the case.

A brain scan revealed the troubling presence of a hematoma that could be traced back to a headbutt Metallo had been on the receiving end of, courtesy of Doreen Lefeged. A three-month regimen of blood thinners was required to dissolve the last stubborn clot. Incidentally, Joanne couldn’t help but chuckle while recalling for me that the neurologist who treated her was named—I shit you not—Dr. Skull. She reassured me that she had gone for sporadic follow-up scans, joking about the fact that “they checked inside my head but couldn’t find anything.” 

Because Earnie Butler refused to work with her until her blood clot had healed completely, Joanne kept her diagnosis concealed from trainer Willie Howard who coached her in his Bethlehem gym and had her run six miles each day. During this time, Metallo admits to going ahead with a karate exhibition versus Tanya Coleman, with whom she would later contest two boxing matches which resulted in one win and a stalemate.

All the while, Metallo had been revolving her workout schedule and road trips for her fights around the swing shift she was assigned to at the Pfizer chemical plant in Easton where her wide variety of responsibilities included driving forklifts and payloaders, monitoring oxidation levels in the metal tanks, cleaning out the industrial waste dams, and changing the outdoor valves no matter how inclement the weather. During breaks, or before or after punching the time clock, Joanne would run the hills on the property in back of the Pfizer factory. 

Not to mention she had been juggling her flourishing boxing career with the continuation of her karate and kickboxing tournaments before it all got to be too much and something had to give. “I couldn’t keep up with karate and boxing together,” said Joanne, “so I chose boxing.”

Metallo converted from a southpaw kickboxer into an orthodox pugilist, known for her “unbelievable left hook.” Her Sunday punch certainly caught the attention of Larry Holmes who told Joanne he would do what he could to see to it that she was fast-tracked to a title shot against junior-lightweight champion, Toni Lear Rodriguez, and promote it himself.

The problem being, Joanne was already in the process of finalizing a move to the west coast, leaving behind Larry Holmes, Earnie Butler, and Pfizer, as well as her thousands of karate trophies. Tournament director Francisco Conde picked her trophies up “by the truckful” so that he could hand these recycled awards out to winners of the tournaments at his dojo after Joanne took care to remove the metal plaques. She forgot about one thing, though. Conde’s victorious students began asking him who this Joanne Metallo was and why her name was written in permanent marker on the bottom of their trophy.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Metallo was guided by manager, trainer, promoter, matchmaker, writer, publisher, and president of the WBB (Women’s Boxing Board) Johnny Dubliss, a jack-of-all-trades when it came to female prizefighting. They would go running every morning, Joanne recalling how he would have her sprint up and down the bleachers of a local high school to build her stamina.

Metallo credits Archie Grant, who had trained heavyweight champion Mike Weaver and was working with Dora Webber at the time, with helping her cultivate a “super aggressive” style with fast hands and pendulum-like head movement that evolved out of the peekaboo turtle shell stance in the style of Archie Moore she had started out with under Earnie Butler. She also trained with Ed Cousins who helped her develop her rhythm, timing, and counterpunching technique. 

After having sparred with her back in Maryland a few years prior, Joanne also got to reconnect with Lady Tyger Trimiar. The trailblazing boxer, who had been among the first three women to be granted a license to fight professionally by the New York State Athletic Commission in 1978 and went on to win the world lightweight championship six months later, had likewise pulled up her roots from the east coast and replanted them in Los Angeles, seeking bigger and better opportunities. Their rapport would blossom into a friendship that will come back into play a little later and still exists to this day.  

“Fighters can back out if you beat them in their gym before the fight,” Joanne told me. “You will end up with no-shows.” This was a lesson Metallo learned the hard way on two separate occasions. Not long before her scheduled shot at Toni Lear Rodriguez in Fort Belvoir, Virginia on October 15, 1986, Joanne worked Rodriguez over “worse than any man I ever fought” in an abbreviated sparring session.

“She was tricky and had smart moves, but she quit after one round,” attests Metallo. Come fight night, the champion was nowhere to be found. Del ‘La Rose’ Pettis, a scrappy Filipina fighter rising up the rankings, agreed to take the place of Rodriguez as a last-minute substitute and mixed it up with Metallo in what Joanne maintains was the toughest fight of her career.

It didn’t help matters any that she entered the ring “overconfident” and admits to having taken Pettis lightly. Metallo was happy to come away with a draw, as well as a newfound respect for Pettis. Nevertheless, Joanne believes that this may have been something of a set-up on the part of the promoter and matchmaker who she says “did me dirty” by tossing her in against a fight night replacement who just so happened to be conveniently standing by, in tip top shape and ready to rumble.

Speaking of Del Pettis, in August 1987 she would end up stepping in to get the crack at the vacant WBB super-featherweight title opposite Laurie Holt which had been intended for Metallo. The originally scheduled fight had to be postponed when Holt, the first licensed female boxer from the state of Maine, broke her thumb. But this turned out to be a moot point for Metallo, who breached the contract by vetoing the clause which called for a full body physical exam.

Laurie Holt claimed the championship by TKO in the main event at Chicago’s Lakeshore Athletic Club, stopping Del Pettis on cuts when referee Stanley Berg halted the bout after the fifth round despite Pettis otherwise enjoying a clear advantage over Holt throughout.        

Metallo regularly engaged in gym wars she categorized as “bloodbaths” with the Webber sisters, renowned prizefighting twins Cora and Dora, and she feels that it was her ruthless aggression during those sparring sessions that caused Dora to skip town two weeks before their super-lightweight title fight at the Los Angeles Forum. It took two years for a still furious Joanne to track Dora down in Paterson, New Jersey thanks to getting her phone number from a mutual acquaintance. 

“I called her and flew to New Jersey. She picked me up and I stayed with her one week,” Metallo recalls of Dora, whom she found to be nothing short of hospitable. “But I’m glad we got in the ring. I was very mad at the no-show at the Forum and I stuck a hard blow in,” she continued, recounting their animated go-round at Webber’s gym during her visit. “She flew back in the corner. I had to do what I had to do to get even.” There were evidently no hard feelings on the part of Dora, who Joanne remarks “was very nice” and “took me back to the airport to go home to California.”

Del Pettis once again reenters our story, this time joining forces with Metallo to take part in the hunger strike being carried out in April 1987 by Lady Tyger Trimiar in an attempt to bring nationwide attention to the inequities suffered by female boxers. To increase their visibility, Trimiar, Metallo, and Pettis took advantage of the opportunity to march on Caesars Palace in Las Vegas the weekend of the Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs. Sugar Ray Leonard super-fight in a protest that would also benefit from shining a light on the less than progressive attitude toward women’s boxing exhibited by the event’s promoter, Bob Arum. 

Their mission statement called for economic parity, major network coverage, corporate sponsorship, and compensation from promoters for loss of livelihood. “If you are Black or a woman of any race, then you should know the frustration that I feel being denied employment,” Metallo is quoted as saying on the front of the pamphlet listing their demands that the three boxers would distribute to anybody who would take one. “I reminded ex-champion Larry Holmes that there were times when Black men were not allowed to fight for money. Has he forgotten? Will he help?”

Metallo doesn’t recall whether or not she got a response from Holmes, but Lady Tyger has told me that Mike Tyson was the most recognizable of the male fighters to sign her petition and support the cause. The consumption of water and V8 juice was all that was permitted during the hunger strike, and Joanne’s conscience forced her to confess early on to Lady Tyger, who was the only one of the three women to fast for the full 30 days, that she had cheated by having potato chips.

“I loved wars,” Metallo reminisced. “I beat some guys so hard I noticed they left the gym on Broadway. I went to a gym nearby and there they were!” One of them had been a sparring partner in Thomas Hearns’ training camp. Johnny Dubliss arranged for Joanne to work with a woman who was a “large Marine” but just a beginner, so he cautioned Metallo to go easy on her in what was to be no more than a confidence-building exhibition. With a film crew present, Metallo evidently couldn’t curb her enthusiasm.

“We worked on a karate mat in a dojo,” Joanne recalls. “After the first round, Johnny said she’s going to quit, lighten up the punches.” Metallo complied, but was angered when the news report skewed the story in favor of the newcomer, presenting the footage in a way that made it appear as though she had gotten the better of Joanne, a seasoned professional. 

While working as a baggage handler for an airline, Metallo pinched a nerve in her neck which not only caused excruciating chronic pain but severely compromised the mobility in her left arm. Warned by doctors that undue aggravation of the nerve could result in permanent paralysis of her arm, Joanne stepped away from boxing. It was with great reluctance that she hung up the gloves, her laments that “it was hard to get fights” and she “made very little money” notwithstanding. Despite being featured in the main event in each one of her fights, her purse money never exceeded $300 during her boxing career.

This was especially unfortunate seeing as though Metallo says that right around then, she had been communicating with Christy Martin about traveling down to her gym in Miami to do some sparring with the ‘Coalminer’s Daughter’ and potentially set up a fight between the two. Win, lose, or draw, an opportunity of this magnitude at this time would have, at the bare minimum, allowed Joanne to share center stage with the biggest name in women’s boxing up to that point.  

Metallo was asked to play a bit part in the 2000 movie Knockout, the story of a young woman named Isabelle Alvarado (played by first-time actor Sophia Adella Luke) who follows in her father's footsteps by entering into the world of boxing. Despite the fact that her pinched nerve prevented Joanne from participating in any physical contact during filming, she was featured in several sequences of a training montage that made it into the final cut. 

Fredia ‘the Cheetah’ Gibbs, who, like Metallo, was a martial artist, kickboxer, and prizefighter, was assigned the substantial part of Tanya ‘Terminator’ Tessaro, the film’s main antagonist, while Dora Webber and world title contender Marsha Valley would appear in cameo roles. Valley would later go on to hold the dubious distinction of getting knocked out not once, not twice, but three times by Ann Wolfe.

Known as ‘The First Woman of Boxing,’ Jackie Kallen, who began as Thomas Hearns’ publicist and made headlines by managing James ‘Lights Out’ Toney, played the part of an official with the WFBA, a make-believe sanctioning body, in Knockout. Four years later, Meg Ryan would portray Kallen in the biopic Against the Ropes. Also featured in Knockout was ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley as a color commentator.

These days, Joanne enjoys spending time playing with her dogs, working outside, maintaining her property, and keeping up the best she can with the current state of female prizefighting, contentedly avowing that “boxing changed my life.”

Sources:

Kevin Cowherd. Two Ladies Who Swing (Baltimore Evening Sun, May 6, 1983)

Kevin Cowherd. Female Boxers: An Uphill Climb (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 9, 1983)

Neil H. Greenberger. Women to Fight on Taylor-Sawyer Undercard Tonight (Washington Post, October 1, 1983)

Joe Kita. One of the Boys (Allentown Morning Call, May 7, 1983)

Ray McHugh. Nobody’s Gonna Beat Him (Pittsburgh Press, September 23, 1984)

Pete Shaheen. She’s a Real Knockout (Allentown Morning Call, May 7, 1983)

Paul Sullivan. Laurie Holt vs. Del Pettis—10 Rounds for WBB Championship Belt (Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1987)

Lear to Fight in Virginia (Scranton Tribune, October 14, 1986)

Author Interviews with Joanne Metallo