With two successful trips to Japan under her belt, VanBuskirk
would finally get to perform before an audience of American fight fans for the
first time. Britt would receive no pushover for her US debut at the Hyatt Hotel
in Lake Tahoe on April 12, 1979. Standing in the opposing corner would be the
unbeaten Nevada State welterweight champion Julie Mullen, who had earned that honor
by knocking out Lavonne Ludian seven months prior. Mullen’s title would not be
on the line.
“Julie had been boxing for a while and had some fights,”
remarks VanBuskirk today. Among Mullen’s impressive victories were a pair of
unanimous decisions over Toni Lear Rodriguez. “I was a tremendous underdog with
no fights showing. It was a tense time for me because of all the chatter about
Julie’s skills and me having none,” Britt elaborates further. “I saw her in the
elevator and asked if she would have a beer with me after the fight. She said, ‘I
will have six with you.’ Once again, I could hear Howard’s voice telling me to
work my jab when the time comes, and when you see the opening throw the right
hand. Follow it with a left hook, step back with a stiff jab. These things I
did in the first round. In the second round, I landed a beautiful bunch of jabs
and I saw fear in her eyes. It was time to do as Howard said, so I stepped in
with the combination. The right hand landed, and she went down cold in the
second round. I never saw her again. Back at the gym, Howard was smiling from
ear to ear.”
At the time, Van Buskirk remarked to the Women’s Boxing
Board publication WBB News, “It was the happiest moment of my life when
the ref counted ten over Julie. I knew then that boxing was my life.” Mullen
fought just once more, a points win over novice Blanca Rodriguez ten months
later.
Already having staged the first all-female boxing card at
the Hawthorne Memorial Center on February 11, 1979, promoter Sammy Sanders was
audaciously arranging another in quick order, this time headlined by a
California State Championship Triple Crown at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on
July 13. “It was a big, big deal for women’s boxing,” remembers VanBuskirk. “They
started to put the card together, and I was worried that I wouldn’t get the
chance to fight but turned out to be the main event.”
With the bill also featuring Lady Tyger Trimiar battling
Ernestine Jones, Squeaky Bayardo facing Ginate Troy (a late replacement for
Toni Bryant), and renowned martial artist Graciela Casillas making her pro boxing
debut opposite Karen Bennett, Toni Lear Rodriguez would square off against
Lilli Rodriguez with the featherweight title on the line while Cora Webber was
scheduled to take on Carlotta Lee for the super-featherweight crown.
Vying for the California State welterweight championship before
a crowd of 2,500 at the LA Sports Arena, Britt’s rival wound up being a
familiar face. Specifically, that of ‘Sweet’ Dulce Lucas, a California
prizefighter by way of Puerto Rico who had KO’d Valerie Ganther on the
Hawthorne show and begun showing up at the Hoover St. Gym when not working out of
her crosstown home base at the Main Street Gym, which had since started
allowing women to train there. Even the Olympic Gym, where Britt had been
initially turned away, now bestowed admittance to females, the most prominent
of which was Graciela Casillas.
“I wanted to box with her,” says Britt about first seeing
Dulce Lucas at Hoover St. “I asked my trainer if I could, and he said no. I
felt sad and mad because he wouldn’t let me. She kept coming and he kept saying
no until finally one day he said yes.” There’s an old idiom that warns to be
careful what you wish for, and Lucas taught VanBuskirk this lesson the hard way.
“I got in the ring and out on the same bell. She hit me
so hard to the body I could taste blood. I didn’t last a round,” she confesses.
“Howard had to stop the sparring session. I went home and cried that night in
my dinner plate, threw my jabs, and went to bed, woke up and got back on the
bus.”
Britt had something of an epiphany during one of her many
interminable bus rides to the Hoover St. Gym, coming to the realization one
morning that she was beyond a shadow of a doubt ready for Dulce Lucas after putting
in countless hours of hard time both at the gym and her workplace.
“Dee Knuckles made me move closer to the gym. I lived in Watts
in a store that was owned by a man named Ted Gambino. After training, I worked
in the store at the cash register behind a bullet proof window,” reflects
VanBuskirk. “Every morning, Howard would come throw rocks at my window at about
6am. It was time to run. He took me to a park, and I ran three miles then I had
to shadow box in a sand pit for fifteen minutes. Howard had another fighter
with me, a heavyweight, and he would always dog out and go sit down. I kept
going because I would think, ‘What if you quit and your opponent keeps going?’ That
would scare the crap out of me, and motivation set in.” There was an additional
incentive to beating Dulce Lucas, courtesy of her employer. “Ted Gambino had a
motorcycle for sale, and I wanted it but was short on cash. The cost was $600.
Ted told me if I won the fight he would give it to me.”
Already beyond delighted with his pupil’s determination and work ethic, Britt’s trainer Howard McCord would be in her corner for the first time against Dulce Lucas. The result would be a far cry from that of their Hoover St. Gym sparring session, but by no means would arriving at that abbreviated end point be a walk in the park.
“I remember going toe to toe with her in the first round.
She came at me like a mad woman, throwing bombs from everywhere. Big, big right
hands. With Howard in my corner, I was able to stay on the game plan,”
VanBuskirk recalls. “She threw a lot, and I made her miss and countered. In the
third round, she caught me with something. Don’t know what it was, but it was
big. I don’t think I have seen stars since that day. Maybe when Rijker cheap
shotted me.”
“But it buckled my knees,” Britt continued on the subject
of being on the receiving end of Lucas’ shot. “All of a sudden, my knees would
not lock and I saw bright stars. Then I could see again and my knees held me. I
went to the corner and Howard said, ‘You got hit, that’s all.’ I was tired and
scared. The other second broke an amyl nitrate tab under my nose.”
For those of us who have never found ourselves in a
similar predicament and are curious to know what the aftereffects of absorbing
such a powerful punch feel like, Britt elaborates on the sensation. “Being
staggered is a very scary situation. It’s as if you have no legs willing to
hold you and is impossible to train for. Thank goodness it passes quickly,” she
says. “The smelling salt is awful too, but it does something amazing. It makes
you become part of this world again.”
The commencement of round four brought with it a turning
of the tide, and VanBuskirk rode on the crest of a wave for the remainder of
the fight. “Dulce came in for the kill but was in a hurry, underestimating my
worth and Howard’s skill. She started to make big mistakes, dropping her hands
to run in and swinging from her hip. I was able to avoid everything she threw,”
she tells me. “When I went to the corner, Howard was able to pinpoint her mistakes
and coach me to victory. He told me exactly what to do.”
McCord’s instructions, which had never let Britt down
before, were right on the money yet again. “Keep your composure…she’s tired…she’s
swinging from everywhere…make your blocks…keep your range…when you see the big,
wide opening that I can see from here, throw your right hand…follow with a
combination, and step back with a jab.”
With Howard’s mantras swirling around in her reanimated
brain, VanBuskirk got up off her stool and got down to business. “I began to
hit her with everything I threw. Everything was landing, and she began to fade,”
Britt remembers. She vividly recalls Lucas’ corner throwing in the towel before
the bell signaling the beginning of round six.
Having won the California State welterweight championship
by technical knockout, VanBuskirk jumped around the ring like a kernel of corn
popping on a stovetop skillet, lifting up Howard McCord and doing a victory lap
from corner to corner with him in her arms.
As for the woman she just conquered who had hit her so
hard on two separate occasions that she saw stars and had cried at her dinner
table, Britt proudly affirms, “Dulce Lucas never fought again.”
Between October and November 1979, VanBuskirk once again
returned to Japan, this time for a six-week tour and without the accompaniment
of her manager. “Dee had a family with two boys and a husband named Bob. He
worked as a longshoreman at the San Pedro harbor. Because of this, she said she
would be sending me alone,” explains Britt. “I would be gone six weeks. She
could not be gone from her family that long.” In addition to earning $600 a
week, VanBuskirk would have her food, housing, and transportation taken care of
by New World Wrestling and Martial Arts, the outfit that organized and funded
the excursion.
“On the plane over there, I met a woman named Liz Miller.
She told me that she was a WWF wrestler who was traveling with four other
wrestlers, and we were going to be working for the same company and going on
the same tour,” Britt says, reflecting on her extended stay in the Land of the
Rising Sun.
“Some weeks we just hung around the hotel. Others we rode
on a tour bus to every island in Japan, some weeks fighting four times, others
only two, or none. The bus was loaded on to a ferry boat with us and the
Japanese fighting team. We all rode together,” she continues. “I made many
friends and saw things I would have never seen had I not gone. We slept on a floor
made of rice paper and had to change shoes constantly. A car with a speaker on
the roof traveled with us to announce that we were in town and the fights would
be tonight. At the arena, everyone had to remove their shoes and put them in a
big bookcase then find them when leaving. There was no power and they heated
the arena with propane blowers. I saw Japanese people working in rice fields
with big round hats. The bus had to wind up mountain roads so narrow, the
wrestling team got off and walked to the top. I stayed on and laughed at them.
I fought twelve times while I was there this time. I will never forget the time
I spent in Japan and consider myself lucky to have gone.”
Earlier that year, between her bouts with Julie Mullen
and Dulce Lucas, Britt had fought Shima Miyako, who she faced four times during
her tour of Japan, at a high school gym in Clovis, New Mexico. “After that, we
all went to Disneyland,” VanBuskirk recalls. “Dee Knuckles took us.”
The pressure with which the brakes were applied to the
perceptible gain in momentum that women’s boxing was enjoying at that moment
perplexes VanBuskirk to this day. “It would seem that women’s boxing was here
to stay, but oddly no other women’s cards were made. We all trained daily. The
gyms began to fill with women,” she attests. “Bob Arum was the big promoter in LA.
He would not promote any women’s boxing at the Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles,
saying about the same crap he does today. He’s a real creep. He would only
promote Mia St. John at the Playboy Mansion. Much time passed with no fights
for any of us.”
Having befriended Ken Norton and Archie Moore, and made
the acquaintance of Danny Lopez and Sugar Ray Leonard, along the way,
VanBuskirk would subsequently remain absent from the prize ring until 1983 when
she would knock out Gwen Gemini in the third round at a Fort Worth honkytonk joint
called Billy Bob’s for a $500 payday.
“You just can’t realize how hard it is for me to get
opponents,” Britt told sportswriter Mike Estel at the time. “If I was a man,
I’d be turning fights down right now and still be making all kinds of money.”
Instead, VanBuskirk worked as a bouncer at a nightspot popular with the unruly college
crowd in Carbondale, Illinois where she had relocated when her stepmother accepted
a position as an English professor at Southern Illinois University.
“They need to start televising more women’s boxing,” VanBuskirk complained to Mike Estel in his piece for the Southern Illinoisian. “A lot of people would watch it if they knew it was on TV. And a lot of women would probably start getting into it too.”
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