Her comeback now set in motion, however unceremoniously,
Britt fought on a dozen subsequent occasions over the next thirteen months. The
results were a mixed bag of wins over previously unbeaten boxers like Dianna
Lewis, Daisy Ocasio, and Dana Bates in a rematch, and losses to Jeanne Martinez
(twice), Sabrina Hall, Suzette Taylor, Daniele Doobenen, and Dana Bates in
their first fight. VanBuskirk held future world champion Isra Girgrah to a
four-round draw and had earlier dueled to a stalemate opposite Gina Nicholas.
By September 2000, Sumya Anani was 16-0 and was being
mentioned in the same breath as Christy Martin and Lucia Rijker in the
conversation regarding the best pound for pound female fighter by virtue of her
headline-grabbing upset over Christy at the tail end of 1998. Not only did
Anani, known as ‘The Island Girl,’ beat Martin, she beat her up. So badly in
fact that she sent Christy to the hospital. Unable to corner Martin for a
return engagement for reasons that will be explained shortly, Sumya jumped on
whatever opportunity came her way, decisively outpunching and outpointing
then-unbeaten Denise Moraetes and scoring a pair of victories over Cora
Webber’s sister Dora.
“When the phone rang for Sumya I had streptococcus, strep
throat. This time they gave me about one week’s notice, maybe even ten days,” Britt
remembers. “I had heard that she had beaten Christy, so I knew that this would
be an important and tough fight.”
The six-rounder between Anani and Van Buskirk was the
co-headlining bout on a show held in the parking lot of Harrah’s Casino in St.
Louis which featured Cory Spinks in the main event. Billed as ‘Knockout Night
3’ (presumably the third in a series), the card was staged by Tony Holden, who
promoted Christy Martin’s future wife, Lisa Holewyne.
Judging by the unflattering terminology used by Joe
Miller in his feature for the Kansas City Pitch, there was no mistaking
the fact that Britt was the B-side of this production while Sumya was very much
the hit single racing up the charts. While he acknowledged that “VanBuskirk was
once ranked the best woman fighter in the world,” Miller quickly dismissed this
as “ancient history in the post-Christy Martin world.” Miller mocked Britt’s
“mannish” crewcut which framed a face he said looked “chiseled and rough as a
roadworn refugee’s.”
By night’s end, the joke would be on Joe Miller and
everyone else who laughed VanBuskirk off as “a chump for hire” and “a has-been
with a losing record.” To the surprise of all her snarky naysayers, Britt put
the first scratch on Sumya’s formerly flawless record.
“On the way to the fight, I practiced saying Sumya’s name,”
reflects VanBuskirk. Phonetically pronounced “Suwm-ayah,” and meaning special
or unique, it is indeed more than meets the eye. “Everything went smoothly
until the bell rang. In the first round I was surprised at how easy she was to hit,
and it went that way until the fourth round when I landed a smashing right hand
right behind her ear and she went down,” Britt recounts.
“She tried to get up but fell over again. The referee was
counting very slowly. When he was at 8, she was up but not capable of standing
without the support of the ropes,” she continues. “I moved forward from the
white corner. The referee waved me back to the corner and started to count
again. Timewise, she got about a 15-count before he started the fight again. She
should have been counted out right there with a knockout, but the referee saved
her.” With just two rounds to go and the fight’s outcome hanging in the
balance, VanBuskirk looked to press the advantage, which was easier said than
done with Anani intent on switching gears from survival mode to attack mode.
“She came back and fought like a wildcat. She landed some
horrendous punches. Sumya is a tough customer,” Britt
acknowledges. “She is in excellent shape and boxes very unorthodox because she
switches from left to right with almost every punch, so it’s very hard to see
every punch coming in. I always say it’s like fighting your little sister.
Because of my reach I was able to control her, and we heard the final bell.
When they were reading the scores, one judge had given the fight to Anani, and one
had given it to me. The third judge was the man that came to my gym and
certified it. He gave the fight to me.” The official scores were 57-56 Anani
and 58-55, 57-56 VanBuskirk.
“He later told me it wasn’t a split decision, it was a knockout.
I had a couple of words with the referee,” says Britt. “When I went to pick up
my money, Tony Holden said, ‘Congratulations. The winner of this fight goes
against Lucia Rijker.’ Later I spoke with Sumya. She told me that she was sure
that I was a boy and that’s why she lost.”
Embarrassed as she was at the risk of hurting Britt’s
feelings, Sumya confirmed this for me during a recent phone conversation during
which she gave me permission to print her remarks. “I was scared,” she confessed
before elaborating on the backstory.
Don King had offered Anani a promotional contract after
she had beaten Christy Martin and, despite people telling her that she was
crazy to turn down that sort of lucrative opportunity, she was brazen and, in
retrospect, wise enough to do exactly that. Surrender her professional independence
for the glittering prizes and cash rewards? No thank you, Anani concluded. Not
worth it in her estimation.
At the time, however, Sumya did fear what the fallout
from rebuffing King might be. Perhaps so serious a consequence as being
blackballed. “That did happen to a certain extent,” she told me. With no pay-per-view
fights or extraordinary paydays forthcoming, she took what she could get and
hoped for the best.
“I was in a bad headspace,” said Anani. So much so that,
upon seeing VanBuskirk before their first fight, Sumya convinced herself that
Don King was out to get her by setting her up to fight a man. Not that she is
making excuses for the loss, but Anani offers nevertheless, “Mentally, I just
wasn’t there that night.”
A practitioner and instructor in yoga and meditation
before, during, and after her boxing career, Sumya stressed to me the power of
the mind. “The mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy,” she said during
our talk. Ideally, the individual’s goal in boxing, martial arts, meditation,
yoga, and life itself, she proposed, is to achieve through constant and
diligent practice a vital symmetry between body and mind. This will allow us to
adapt to adversity and continue to evolve as human beings.
“Fear is such an awesome motivator,” Sumya went on to
theorize. “It all depends on how we channel it.” The perfect juxtaposition, she
illustrated, was how she used fear in her favor to defeat Christy Martin, as
opposed to succumbing to it before she even stepped between the ropes to touch
gloves with Britt.
Anani’s lifelong trainer and mentor Barry Becker was reportedly
disconsolate after the loss to VanBuskirk, sure that they had just blown their
shot at a potential rematch with Christy Martin or a legacy-building fight
against Lucia Rijker. Ultimately, neither option would pan out for Sumya, as Rijker
and Martin fruitlessly chased each other around the country for the next five years
on what Anani would sarcastically refer to as the “money train.” VanBuskirk
would not be awarded the promised fight with Rijker either.
Instead, Britt and Anani would again find themselves
matched opposite one another thirteen months later. And with a world championship
on the line. In the meantime, though, VanBuskirk fought for two other world
titles, losing on points to Marischa Sjauw for the vacant IBA super-lightweight
championship and then to Gina Guidi with the brand new WIBA welterweight strap
up for grabs.
“When the call came for the Anani rematch it was against
Lisa Holewyne first, which she denies to this day,” claims VanBuskirk. “I had a
contract to fight Lisa Holewyne, and the promoter called and said he was going
to switch opponents. He was going to replace Lisa Holewyne with Sumya Anani. I
said, ‘That is quite an upgrade.’ Come to find out Lisa took a fight with
Christy and left me with Anani.” Britt would eventually tangle with Holewyne,
three times no less, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
“About four days away from the fight, my girlfriend comes
in, sits down, and says, ‘Are you focused for the fight?’ I said, ‘Yes, I
believe I am focused.’ She said, ‘Good, I’m leaving as soon as we get home from
the fight,’” recounts VanBuskirk. “I went to the fight, cried the whole way
there and home.”
Not that the breakup of a relationship is ever fun or
convenient, but for Britt her partner’s revelation couldn’t have come at a
worse time. Her return bout against Sumya was the main event on a show held at
the Seven Feathers Casino Resort in Canyonville, Oregon. Legendary pioneer of
the sport Barbara Buttrick was on hand that evening in the role of acting
supervisor representing the GBU (Global Boxing Union) to personally bestow
their inaugural World Welterweight Title belt to the victor. “It was so cool
getting to meet Barbara Buttrick,” enthuses Sumya.
“Anani was out for blood,” VanBuskirk exclaims emphatically.
“I had recently handed her the most painful thing a prizefighter can endure
(her first defeat), and she was out to right it. I was tired when the first
bell rang. She came at me like something out of an Alien movie. She
knocked me from one corner of the ring to the other for ten rounds.” If it
wasn’t bad enough having to fend off Sumya’s relentless attacks, Britt’s
thoughts and emotions were elsewhere. Again, the power of the mind comes into
play.
“I was somehow able to remove myself from the fight,” she
says. “I remember the tenth round, she tried to knock me out. She threw
everything she had. Some landed too, many actually, but I finished on my feet.
I have never been knocked down, not even in the gym. Sumya Anani deserved to
win that day and won a world championship that she also deserved. I got what I
deserved. A rematch.”
And on February 1, 2002, a rematch there would be. “After
the second Anani fight, I was in my 40s and ready to call it a career. After
Sharla left, I didn’t have anyone to work my corner or even a sparring partner.
It was a very lonesome time for me. I felt empty. I had lost my third world
championship fight and my girlfriend of four years in one day. It seemed that
all I wanted was a rematch with Anani,” reflects Britt.
“Four months later the phone rang, and I got the offer
for a rematch with Anani. I took it. A six-rounder in Oklahoma City. Friday Night
Fights on ESPN. In my opinion it was a good fight,” VanBuskirk says. “Anani
won, but I beat her up. That’s the best way to describe it. She won fair and
square, but I hit her with some big right hands and split her eyebrow open.” Injury
notwithstanding, Sumya swept the judges’ scorecards for a unanimous 80-72
verdict in her favor.
“I went home and decided to stop boxing forever, a hard
thing to do,” states VanBuskirk. “But my phone rang with an offer to fight Lisa
Holewyne. I asked, ‘Why don’t you get Anani?’ They said because she’s suspended
because of a cut over her eye for sixty days. I thought to myself, damn she won
and is suspended and I’m not! I won! I’ll
take the fight. It was six rounds against Lisa Holewyne in Texas. She won and I
moved on from boxing. To the Hall of Fame!”
Britt was inducted into the International Women’s Boxing
Hall of Fame as a member of their Class of 2016 in the company of her old
friend Lady Tyger Trimiar, as well as Jane Couch, Elena Reid, Ann-Marie
Saccurato, Giselle Salandy, Jackie Kallen, and her three-time ring foe, Sumya
Anani.
Sumya made sure to point out to me her feelings toward
Britt as “a good person and a great fighter.” The two have gotten to reconnect
from time to time throughout the years at various functions and on social media.
“What a career she had,” says Sumya admiringly. “Someone should write a book
about her. I’m sure she’s got so many great stories to tell.”
Indeed, she does. We’ve barely scratched the surface
here.
Postscript
“I’d go buy myself a big yacht and sail away, never to be
heard from again,” Britt mused in 1983 when asked what she would do if she were
able to make enough money from boxing to live comfortably.
This didn’t happen, of course. Neither fame and fortune
nor seafaring anonymity were in the cards for VanBuskirk, although by design she
has existed largely off the grid since hanging up her boxing gloves.
Taking her sixteen-year sabbatical into consideration, Britt’s
career went on to span a quarter-century and crossed over multiple generations
of female prizefighters, from blazing trails shoulder to shoulder with Lady
Tyger, Squeaky Bayardo, Cora Webber, Julie Mullen, and Dulce Lucas to competing
decades later against the likes of Lucia Rijker, Isra Girgrah, Lisa Holewyne,
Chevelle Hallback, and Sumya Anani.
“Boxing is very near and dear to me. I understand it intimately.
When I look back, I am glad that I had the vision I had at such a young age. I
felt that females had the right to fight, and we had to fight for that right so
now there can be such a thing as Beautiful Brawlers and females boxing at the
Olympic games,” testifies VanBuskirk in closing.
“It’s much more than I expected in my lifetime. The
proudest thing in my life is that I was where I was when I was, to join the
people that I did in a movement that gave a heartbeat to women’s boxing. I don’t
think it is understood how hard the pioneers’ work was and the sacrifices made
so that boxing can be what it is today,” she continues.
“I have seen women’s boxing go from not being allowed in
the gym to me fighting the main event to men fighting on our undercards. That’s
a long way! My hope is that it is not mishandled like pot-grabbing for fame,
that the training standards improve. Now anybody with a pair of mitts thinks
they are a trainer. This is a fatal mistake for a lot of the folks coming up.
It will result in a very short time in the ring. So, treat boxing like a little
infant baby because that is what it is, and it will go where we lead it. Boxing
will always give back.”
Sources:
Author Interviews with Britt VanBuskirk and
Sumya Anani
Boxrec.com
Britt VanBuskirk Ring Record (supplied to
author by Sue Fox)
Robert Enstad. This Boxer is So Good She
Frightens Off Foes (Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1983)
Mike Estel. This Woman Really Packs a Punch
(Southern Illinoisan, March 20, 1983)
Sue Fox. Fight Night at the Seven Feathers
with Sumya Anani Facing Britt VanBuskirk for GBU World Title (WBAN October 21,
2001—accessed at http://www.wbanmember.com/fight-report-sumya-anani-vs-britt-vanbuskirk/)
Joe Miller. To Her, With Glove (Kansas City
Pitch, September 28, 2000)
La Canada’s Women’s’ Boxing Champ (WBB News,
January 1980)
Amateur Boxers Flocking to Gym in Carbondale
(Bloomington Pantagraph, June 13, 1995)
The AX Forum: Female Thai Boxing History (http://message.axkickboxing.com/index.phtml?action=dispthread&topic=24359&junk=1209591760.9093)
1979: Britt VanBuskirk, pro boxer vs.
Kickboxer from Japan (in Japan) About 1979. Britt won by KO (uploaded to
YouTube by WBAN100, October 22, 2020—accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doqrK_MbsyQ)
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