Shirley ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker: A Boxing Pioneer of a Different Stripe

 

“The majority of women in professional boxing is in it for the money. Otherwise, we wouldn’t subject ourselves to the catcalls and remarks on how undignified boxing is for young ladies,” Shirley Tucker wrote in an October 18, 1977 editorial printed in the San Francisco Examiner. The byline simply carried her ring moniker, Zebra Girl. “I feel that women have come a long way since being allowed equal rights to vote and I feel professional boxing is no more undignified for women than softball, tennis, swimming, bowling, and other sports.”

Knee-jerk conclusions which ran rampant at the time that female prizefighters must obviously be gay irritated Zebra Girl tremendously. “I’m no more a homosexual than my mother and she had thirteen children,” Tucker retorted. Born in Redmon, Oregon, Shirley was one of nine girls in the Tucker household.

A twenty-one year-old single mother fighting out of Santa Rosa, California, Zebra Girl had two children of her own at the dawn of her pugilistic career in 1977, a son Jamie and daughter named Kori. As for her parents, Shirley’s mother Lahoma not only supported her decision to box professionally but sometimes worked her corner on fight nights. The same could not be said for Tucker’s father, who did not endorse his daughter’s chosen vocation.

When she put her boxing gloves and trademark black and white striped trunks in permanent storage in 1982, Shirley left her unique imprint on the sport thanks to a lengthy list of achievements and historic firsts. The most formidable opponent Tucker went toe to toe with was the California State Athletic Commission, but the obstinate functionaries met their match in Zebra Girl. Just as she emerged victorious in all of her sixteen career bouts, Shirley prevailed every time she squared off against the Commission.

The word “capitulate” was not in her vocabulary. “Pioneer,” on the other hand, was a word Zebra Girl Tucker personified. Even if blazing fresh trails was not necessarily first and foremost on her agenda.

“I’m no crusader for women’s rights,” she admitted. “I just want to be somebody. I want to prove women can box and don’t have to stay in the kitchen and cook. Quite a few people have tried to talk me out of fighting, but I tell them to just give me a chance. That’s all I want, to become a world champion.” Tucker also spoke of her dream to make enough money from boxing to be able to retire comfortably and open an establishment she envisioned calling the Zebra Cocktail Lounge.

Even for today’s select few headlining top-earners like Katie Taylor, Claressa Shields, and Amanda Serrano, purse money for women boxers is still woeful when compared to their male counterparts. In the 1970s though, it was literally pennies on the dollar. A couple hundred bucks at best. Tucker, however, was able to bank a sizeable payday in her fourth pro fight while breaking down a gender barrier on a distant continent in the process.     

“I got $3,500 for stopping Jamie Gayden in the fourth round in Accra, Ghana last year,” Zebra Girl boasted in 1979. Under the tutelage of trainer Al Lemay, she had debuted against Gayden six months prior, winning on points in Lake Tahoe and notched two KO victories—over Paula Trichel and Edie Hoag—in the meantime. “They had never seen women boxers in Africa before, so we made history in front of a couple thousand people.”

Other than blatant misogyny, one of the main reasons for the meager payouts to female fighters of this era was that their compensation was proportional to the women’s deliberately reduced work rate. The California State Athletic Commission had arbitrarily determined that women’s bouts could be contested at a duration of no more than four two-minute rounds. Backed by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), Zebra Girl strenuously petitioned the Athletic Commission in an attempt to have this limitation abolished in 1979.

She had been an outspoken advocate for the lifting of the CSAC’s four-round restriction since being issued her boxing license two years earlier. Lady Tyger Trimiar, Shirley’s friend and sparring partner and future world lightweight champion, was also heavily involved in the cause and attended Committee meetings to voice her opposition to the four-round regulation.

“Boxing promoters may use woman boxers one time because of the novelty of seeing two women flailing gloves at each other, but after that it’s not economical for them to use us again,” Tucker theorized in the aforementioned editorial penned in 1977. “Most of us women have families to support. I have two children to support and, with the current four-round law, the amount of money I can make is restricted…The law change would make promoters more amenable to using us regularly. Then a woman’s world rating could be published and some of us would be fortunate enough to be champion of the whole wide world in our weight class.”

Shirley’s ceaseless persistence paid dividends and the CSAC abolished its four-round rule. This earned Zebra Girl an additional nickname, The Girl Who Kayoed a Commission, bestowed upon her by Mary-Ann Noble of Boxing Illustrated, the only mainstream publication of its time that gave serious consideration to female fighters.

On February 11, 1979 Tucker participated on the first ever all women’s boxing card, held at the Hawthorne Memorial Center. She came out on top of a five-round split verdict over Toni Lear Rodriguez, against whom Zebra Girl would face off on three subsequent occasions. Despite the fact that she lost all four of their fights, Rodriguez would last the full distance in each contest, setting her apart as the only one of Tucker’s nine different adversaries to not fall victim to a Zebra Girl KO.

1980 was a landmark year for Tucker with three history-making fights all occurring at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium. It started off in style on January 10 when she main evented a five-bout card additionally featuring a pair each of women’s and men’s fights. This marked the first time, in California anyway, that a women’s match headlined a boxing show with men fighting on the undercard.

Former actress Amy Levitt (Dog Day Afternoon, The Streets of San Francisco) made her boxing debut by outpointing fellow novice Denise Coleman, while Paula Trichel earned a split decision over Cheryl Laudd in the female preliminaries. The conclusion of that evening’s abridged feature attraction came when Zebra Girl Tucker laid Denise Moorehead out flat with a right uppercut at 1:15 of the second round.       

A New York film crew was in town to document the proceedings for the airing of highlights on TV, which was how Zebra Girl was brought to the attention of Don King. And he liked what he saw. So much so that the Barnumesque promoter famous for hyping up fights with nursery rhyme ballyhoo and wearing his hair in a perpetual finger in the light socket style went so far as to consider putting her on one of his shows.

“It would really be something super because then you would not view that as in a feminine situation where they’re delicate and dainty and they can’t help themselves,” opined King. “When you see this young lady, she can perform.” King would never make a formal entreaty to Tucker, nor would he make good on his word to promote Lady Tyger, who ended her 1987 hunger strike only when he promised her to do so. It wouldn’t be until he went into business with Christy Martin that King would step foot into the realm of women’s boxing. And not out of any instinct toward philanthropy but because he viewed the marketable ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ as a lucrative investment opportunity.       

Zebra Girl headlined her second consecutive show at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium two months later, pitted opposite Ginate Troy in California’s first ever female bout scheduled for ten rounds. The fight went ahead without incident despite its violation of the new eight-round limit for women’s matches imposed by the Athletic Commission. As significant as this was, it turned out to be a moot point as only one minute and twenty-five seconds were required for Shirley to put Troy down for the count before a sold-out crowd courtesy of her thunder crack of a right hand. They were no strangers to one another, Tucker and Troy having met twice before with the final bell likewise not having been tolled on either of those occasions.

Now 13-0 with 7 KOs, Zebra Girl was beyond a doubt the top-ranked women’s bantamweight and more than worthy of a shot at a world title. Johnny Dubliss, a manager, trainer, writer, advocate for women’s boxing, and general manager of Glove Boxing Promotions, had evidently been trying in vain for months to match Zebra Girl against similarly undefeated Graciela Casillas for the WBB bantamweight belt. Instead, he turned his focus to the Nevada State bantamweight champion, Karen Bennett.

“I’m finally fighting a fighter instead of the flakes they keep bringing on,” professed Tucker, who had earned a split decision victory in her previous bout with Bennett two years prior in only her fifth outing. “I won’t predict when I’ll win, but I’ll tell you she’ll be carried out of the ring this time.”

Another run-in with the California State Athletic Commission was inevitable when Johnny Dubliss advertised the Zebra Girl/Karen Bennett title fight as a then-unprecedented twelve-round contest. CSAC executive officer Jim Biaz swiftly threatened Dubliss with disciplinary measures such as levying $2,500 fines against both Tucker and Bennett for which he would be responsible and/or impounding the gate receipts, if not pre-emptively shutting the show down altogether unless the number of rounds was reduced to the requisite amount of eight.

“I told them we would be going ahead with the 12-rounder,” vowed a noncompliant Dubliss, who had already sold 400 advance tickets. “I hope I know what I’m doing. This could be a $5,000 gamble. And I could lose my promoter’s license.” Citing sex discrimination, Dubliss obtained a restraining order through his attorney Ray Estabrook which would allow the event to transpire as planned.

Indeed, chief inspector Jim Robertson sat ringside in Santa Rosa for the entirety of the card, stating that he had “no instructions to interfere with the proceedings.” Interference by the Commission from the outset was short-sighted. On the night, attempting to stop the fight from going past eight rounds would have proved strictly academic. Halfway through round six, Zebra Girl stopped Bennett cold to claim the WBB world bantamweight title.  

In 1982, Tucker had sought the guidance of ACLU general counsel Margaret Crosby to represent her with regard to once more lobbying against the State Athletic Commission. This time for the purpose of being granted permission to campaign in the ring against a man. Shirley’s manager and promoter Joe Bradley Sr. confirmed that Johnny ‘Bang Bang’ Jackson, a local super-featherweight whose seventeen bouts to that point (one win and sixteen defeats) had all ended by way of knockout, was agreeable to such a proposition.

After months of debate, the Commission inconceivably ruled in Tucker’s favor that November. “We had no recourse but to approve it,” executive officer Don Fraser was quoted as saying.

However, Johnny Jackson, also a trainer and promoter, was serving a suspension for bouncing checks and unavailable for the foreseeable future. No other licensed males expressed any interest whatsoever in boxing a woman, therefore Zebra Girl’s ambition to compete in a mixed gender match went unfulfilled and her July 23 knockout of rookie Billie Jo Finley would be Tucker’s final fight.   

Sources:

Ralph Leef. Zebra Girl Leads Way Again (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 3, 1980)

Ralph Leef. Waging a War of Words (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 16, 1980)

Ralph Leef. They’ll Carry Her Out This Time (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 17, 1980)

Ralph Leef. Zebra Girl Wants Male Opponent (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 30, 1982)

Mary Ann Noble. The Girl Who Kayoed a Commission (Boxing Illustrated, April 1979)

Bill Soberanes. Steve Chase Wins Boxing Debut (Petaluma Argus-Courier (March 7, 1980)

Special to the Examiner. State Can’t Stop Women’s Bout (San Francisco Examiner, April 18, 1980)

Special to the Bee. Women’s Title Fight Held Despite Commission Threat (Sacramento Bee, April 19, 1980)

Zebra Girl. One Woman Who Fights for Equal Rights (San Francisco Examiner, October 18, 1977)

Zebra Girl Gets to Fight Men (Moline Dispatch, November 7, 1982)

Lydia Bayardo: The 70s Slugger They Called Squeaky

 

By the time she turned eighteen, Lydia Bayardo had earned the hard-won reputation as a slugger on the softball field as well as in the boxing ring.

Growing up in the coastal Los Angeles neighborhood of San Pedro, Lydia wielded one of the hottest bats on the Pirates, routinely responsible for hitting clutch homers and driving in go-ahead or game-winning runs throughout the regular season and, more importantly, the playoffs when it counted the most. The athletically gifted Bayardo was also recognized for her proficiency on San Pedro High School’s basketball squad.

But two years prior to leading the defending champion Pirates to their repeat City title in 1977, Lydia had already committed herself to boxing. She couldn’t possibly have known it then, except for maybe as a recurring vision in her wildest dreams, but Bayardo’s youthful passion for the sweet science would manifest itself into a lifechanging, history making endeavor. 

A five-story building of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture near the port of Los Angeles, the Harbor View House was once an Army/Navy YMCA but had been repurposed as a temporary dwelling place for wayward youths. San Pedro being a tough town, there were more than a few who qualified. 

Sixteen year-old Lydia was one of approximately a dozen misfit pupils, females one and all, who would gather in the dank, roach infested basement of the Harbor View House every Wednesday evening to skip rope, whale away on the heavy bag, and pound out a rat-a-tat-tat staccato rhythm on the speed bag barely illuminated by the dim glow of five 60-watt bulbs, not to mention sharpen up on boxing fundamentals during sparring sessions wherein footwork was especially tricky thanks to the ring’s well-worn, spongy canvas.

The gym’s boxing program, called the San Pedro Locker Club, was run by the matronly and aptly named Dee Knuckles. “Eventually, I’d like to see a professional boxing circuit for women, or at least some organized amateur competition,” professed Knuckles (which, believe it or not, was indeed her real last name). “I have no intention of ever letting my girls get involved in some stunt promotions where they’d have to get in the ring with a man. That’s not the kind of boxing I want to see.”    

At nineteen, Pat Pineda was not only the program’s elder, but Dee’s standout performer and head trainer. In 1976, she would become the first woman to be granted a professional boxing license by the state of California with Knuckles as manager and promoter for her abbreviated, two-fight career. Pineda and Bayardo sparred frequently at the San Pedro Locker Club, and Lydia’s determination was hard to ignore. So too was her improvement.

Dee Knuckles would organize exhibitions and smokers for her girls to participate in, the proceeds from which would go toward buying uniforms and upgrading the gym’s equipment. Bayardo was featured on one such show held on the grounds of the Long Beach VA Hospital, attended by 300 spectators consisting mostly of patients and their families. Lydia was matched opposite Irma Torres, who was just one year younger.

They were kitted out in red gloves and matching headgear which were donated by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division, otherwise Bayardo and Torres made do with Locker Club t-shirts and denim cutoffs for ring attire. Declared a draw by the sheepish referee, both girls were awarded trophies at the conclusion of their crowd-pleasing skirmish, two rounds in duration.

Lydia made her pro debut before her senior year of high school had even begun, boxing to a four-round draw against Karen Bennett of Las Vegas on September 6, 1977 at the Hyatt Hotel in Lake Tahoe. Not bad at all for a total novice, seeing as though Bennett, a future Nevada State bantamweight champion, already had a handful of fights on her resume and rode a four-fight knockout streak into the bout against Bayardo, who was now known by her ring moniker ‘Squeaky.’

Lydia was given the nickname because of her propensity for squealing whenever she was hugged tight. She would enter the ring wearing a t-shirt with SQUEAKY spelled out in black iron-on letters across the front, and THE BEST written from shoulder to shoulder on the back.

Bennett and Bayardo would square off again three months later. Same venue. Different outcome. Squeaky’s rematch with Karen Bennett was one of four female bouts comprising the undercard to the main event pitting Robbie Epps opposite Henry Walker in a super-welterweight dustup. The card was assembled by matchmaker Bill Dickson who confirmed for the press that this was the very first time more than two women’s fights occurred on the same bill. Shirley ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker took a four-round decision from Fonda Gayden and, similarly, Toni Lear Rodriguez outpointed Tansy ‘Baby Bear’ James, whereas Julie Mullen notched a first-round KO over Rochelle Johnson.

Squeaky made a favorable impression on the Tahoe fight fans by overpowering and stopping Bennett in the fourth and final stanza. Heavyweight Greg Page, still in the early stages of his amateur career with a Golden Gloves title soon to come and a brief stint as WBA world champion to materialize later, was obviously far more impressed by Bayardo then his U.S. Boxing brethren in attendance. Brandishing a Polaroid camera, Page enthusiastically ran up to Bayardo and requested to take a picture with her. “That was a damn good fight,” he exclaimed. “You’re a fighter.”   

Already being talked about as a potential title contender after just two fights, the pragmatic eighteen-year-old preferred to keep things in perspective. “I just want to get in there and do my best,” said Squeaky after her win over Karen Bennett. “I’m not thinking about anything else.” Her humility notwithstanding, a title shot was exactly what awaited Bayardo next.

Nevada State junior-lightweight champion prior to graduation was a distinction that very much set Lydia Bayardo apart from her San Pedro High School classmates, one that she was able to boast by beating the more experienced Toni Lear Rodriguez in a six-rounder at the Lake Tahoe Hyatt in March 1978.

Squeaky made two quick return trips to her stomping ground at Lake Tahoe, scoring knockout victories over Ginate Troy on April 4 and Mary Kudla on May 30. A right hook put an already bloodied and battered Kudla down for the count at the 51 second mark of the third round. Because she was experiencing trouble breathing, Mary was sent to the emergency room as a precautionary measure. Fortunately, it was nothing more serious than a broken nose. 

Bayardo was back in Tahoe two months later, only this time enjoying a change of scenery from the Hyatt ballroom, as she won on points against Joann Williams at Truckee High School’s Surprise Stadium. She would, however, make one last visit to the Hyatt that November when no fewer than four women’s Nevada State championships would be decided.

Ginate Troy claimed possession of the flyweight title by virtue of a first-round knockout of Laurie Ferris, Julie Mullen put Lavonne Ludian away in the fourth of six rounds to take home the welterweight crown, and Karen Bennett became the bantamweight champion by knocking out Bonnie Prestwood in round two. Squeaky alone was unable to finish her opponent inside the distance, but nevertheless acquired the Nevada State lightweight title by decisively outmuscling registered nurse and former kickboxer Carlotta Lee in what was thought to be the best fight on the card dubbed Ladies Night.

Los Angeles’ Hoover St. Gym, known as the Cradle of Boxing Champions, was ahead of the curve with regard to allowing females to train there. Other establishments in the 1970s were known to turn women away at the door. Bayardo worked out there, sparring on a regular basis with welterweight contender Britt VanBuskirk. Future world lightweight champion and hall of famer Lady Tyger Trimiar was a familiar face at the Hoover St. Gym, as was Cora Webber, one of a set of prizefighting twins (her sister Dora would step between the ropes four years later) who was tuning up for her first fight. Turns out, it would be against Squeaky.

No garden variety event was the super-featherweight bout between Squeaky Bayardo and Cora Webber. They dueled to a vigorous five-round draw on the first ever all-women’s boxing card, a set of four world title elimination matches put on by promoter Sammy Sanders at the Hawthorne Memorial Center on February 11, 1979. Shirley ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker won a split decision over Toni Lear Rodriguez (a late substitute for Ginate Troy) in a super-bantamweight scrap, ‘Sweet’ Dulce Lucas needed only two rounds to dispatch fellow welterweight Valerie Ganther, and Lady Tyger Trimiar outpointed Carlotta Lee in the main event. Lady Tyger would win the world lightweight championship seven weeks later, decisioning Sue ‘KO’ Carlson in San Antonio, Texas.

Sammy Sanders staged a second all-female fight card five months after the first, this one held at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on July 13 and headlined by a California State Championship Triple Crown. Britt VanBuskirk knocked out Dulce Lucas in the second round for the welterweight title, Lily Rodriguez edged out Toni Lear Rodriguez in the featherweight contest, and the super-featherweight championship went to Cora Webber via unanimous decision over Carlotta Lee. Graciela Casillas upset Karen Bennett and Lady Tyger stopped Ernestine Jones in two of the preliminary matches. Squeaky accounted for the other.

Unfortunately, Bayardo wasn’t involved in any of the title fights that night, but she just might have stolen the show regardless. She celebrated her fifth-round knockout of Ginate Troy (a last-minute replacement for Toni Bryant) by pumping her gloved fists in the air and jogging around the ring while the theme music to Rocky played on the PA system. Before exiting the ring, the triumphant Squeaky yanked out her mouthpiece and tossed it into the crowd for some lucky admirer to bring home as a souvenir. Evidently not sure what to make of such a unique occurrence of joyful abandon exhibited by a female, one bewildered observer remarked, “I’m used to women throwing garters from a stage.” The times, they were a-changing.

Bayardo’s October 9, 1979 points win over Yvonne Barkley, whose kid brother Iran would go on to twice conquer Thomas Hearns and win world titles in three weight classes, seems to have been her swan song dedicated to a boxing career that was especially remarkable given its brevity, and in which she became acquainted with championship renown on two occasions and not once with defeat.

Sources:

Katie Castator. These Women Will Knock You Out (San Bernardino County Sun, July 15, 1979)

William C. Rempel. Girls Invade Male Domain of Boxing Ring (Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1975)

George Robeson. Feminist Fighting is the New Thing (Long Beach Independent, September 29, 1975)

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

Steve Sneddon. Bantam Bout Set (Reno Gazette-Journal, May 30, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Bad News Betty Battles to Victory (Reno Gazette-Journal, May 31, 1978)

Steve Sneddon. Bennett Stars on Ladies Night Fight Card (Reno Gazette-Journal, November 22, 1978)

Lydia Bayardo Tries to Duck a Punch by Pat Pineda (San Pedro News-Pilot, November 12, 1975)

Squeaky Bayardo Profile on WBAN

Barnstorming Through Council Bluffs: JoAnn Hagen Takes On Pat Emerick and Wrestler Bev Lehmer Over Thanksgiving Week 1949

 

The Bendix plant that opened in South Bend, Indiana in 1923 quickly established itself as the world’s largest manufacturer of automobile brakes. The factory soon began to incorporate the engineering and production of power steering systems, in addition to aircraft landing gear and controls for reciprocating gas turbine, rocket, and nuclear engines.

Operations went into heavy overdrive during the war years and well beyond which was beneficial not only to the U.S. military and government contractors, but scores of recently returned servicemen seeking steady employment. Bendix also provided welcome opportunities to women looking to enter an especially challenging workplace. A lovely young sandlot baseball player by the name of JoAnn Verhagen was one of them.

With her wavy blonde locks, devilish smile, and athletic figure, it should come as little surprise that JoAnn had no problem attracting potential suitors. The problem, though, was that a large portion of these advances were uninvited and, therefore, not terribly appreciated. Such was the case with one especially persistent co-worker who refused to take “no” for an answer. Left with little alternative when her countless verbal rebuffs failed to make an impression on this Bendix lothario, JoAnn came to the conclusion that a sock on the jaw would do the trick. She guessed right.

Georgie Nate, a former boxer of some renown in the Midwest region and a fellow factory worker, saw the whole thing happen and couldn’t wait to go home and tell his brother Johnny about the incident. A bantamweight Golden Glover turned promoter, trainer, and manager, Johnny mentored aspiring female pugilists in the makeshift gym located beneath his tavern on North Hill Street where the girls would work out, hit the heavy bag, and knock one another about in spirited sparring sessions.

JoAnn became a regular at Nate’s training establishment, recruiting and befriending another notable future pioneer named Phyllis Kugler. ‘The Bashing Blonde from South Bend’ had begun her boxing career after first shortening her last name to Hagen. Because less than progressive authorities had a reputation for shutting down boxing shows featuring women on the card, Johnny Nate would attempt to creatively circumvent such illogical bias by billing Kugler as “Phil” rather than Phyllis, for example. Therefore, it is completely within the realm of possibility that JoAnn Hagen might have truncated her first name to simply “Jo” for just such a purpose.

“Pat” was a gender-neutral moniker adopted by Arvilla Emerick, yet another native of South Bend who took to the bruising business. Pat was a carefree high school student who had her first job taking tickets at The Strand movie theater and indulged in typical youthful pastimes like softball, sledding, roller skating, and bowling. She had never given any serious thought to pursuing an athletic endeavor until, at the age of seventeen, the petite five-foot-four, 123-pound Emerick was recruited by Johnny Nate to join his boxing gym. One of nine children, Pat reasoned that having to fend for herself against five brothers in a crowded household was suitable preparation for a venture into pugilism.

Then working at a bakery by night, Emerick trained during the day. She would alternate between running five miles daily on a path alongside the railroad tracks crossing through South Bend and doing her roadwork on the campus of Notre Dame University. Quickly becoming one of the star pupils in Nate’s gym, Pat was quite adept at smacking the speed bag, jumping rope, and sparring—mostly with men. “To be a lady boxer, we thought this would open the door for other women. We did,” professed Emerick in a later recollection. “The men treated us fair. They accepted us and were willing to help us.”

Shortly after turning eighteen, Pat participated in her initial outing at the Palais Royale Auditorium in downtown South Bend, decked out in blue and gold trunks fashioned after Notre Dame’s school colors, a white turtleneck with tennis sneakers to match, and a hairnet that was nearly invisible to the naked eye. Despite being well prepared, Emerick lost the fight, chalking up her defeat to “a case of nerves and the jitters.”

This setback was a temporary one, and Pat would take advantage of plentiful opportunities to put the ledger in her favor. “After that, 18 more,” she said of what followed her unsuccessful pro debut. “All wins,” Emerick boasted. Earning paydays ranging between $200 and $250, some of Pat’s bouts were benefits for widows and children of firefighters or policemen, and she got to meet Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano prior to one such event.

Most of her matches occurred in or adjacent to South Bend, but there would be road trips to Nebraska, as well as Iowa which is where she would ultimately tangle with JoAnn Hagen. Despite the fact that both women hailed from the same hometown in Indiana, Hagen and Emerick would not share a ring together until each were barnstorming through the Midwest in November 1949 and crossed paths in Council Bluffs two days before Thanksgiving.

How she earned this distinction isn’t clear, but nonetheless JoAnn Hagen was billed as the World’s Women’s Champion for her showdown with Pat Emerick. Theirs was a six-round primary support bout to the men’s main event pitting Orville Bitney against Len Craig in a matchup of two middleweights from Nebraska. The scrap between Hagen and Emerick was the first ever in Iowa to put the spotlight on “Girl Boxers” as they were referred to in an ad that ran in the Council Bluffs Nonpareil.

Tickets were conveniently available at local establishments like Dairy Lunch, Clark’s Drug, and the Waycarr Inn at prices of one or two dollars. A mere sixty cents bought you a kids’ seat, for whomever was inclined to bring the youngsters along to the Moose Auditorium for a good old family-friendly evening of prizefighting. Originally known as the CB City Auditorium, the venue was constructed in 1907 for the express purpose of hosting the first annual National Horticultural Congress. The Council Bluffs local fraternity of Moose took out a lease on the building in 1944 and frequently played host to wrestling and boxing shows.

The November 22 card featuring JoAnn Hagen and Pat Emerick was promoted by a colorful character who went by the name of Champ Thomas. A former boxer from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Thomas allegedly engaged in more than one hundred amateur contests before going on to lose just eight of fifty-three fights as a professional while competing against the likes of Steve Belloise, Jack Chase (aka Young Joe Louis), and Reuben Shank. A Navy man during World War II, he was assigned to the Pacific theater where he served as athletic director to more than 100,000 enlistees and promoted 318 boxing shows in which the sailors he trained had participated.

Champ would later gain notoriety by switching to wrestling and becoming one of the most disliked heels on the independent circuit. One newspaper article out of St. Cloud, Minnesota noted, “In the past, local fans have turned out hoping to see him soundly thumped—but that doesn’t happen very often.” Among the grunt and grapple luminaries Thomas is said to have pinned for a three-count are ‘Nature Boy’ Buddy Rogers, Gorgeous George, Jack Guy, Bobo Brazil, Bob Andorff, The Black Panther, and Jack Witzig. None of these claims, incidentally, can be cross referenced or verified.

The boxer, wrestler, and promoter also added the designation of author to his resume, penning pugilistic instruction manuals that bore sensational titles such as How To Create a Super Boxer, Boxing’s Dirty Tricks and Outlaw Killer Punches, and, the best of the bunch, How To Be An Ass-Whipping Boxer.

700 spectators turned out to the Moose Auditorium on this Tuesday night to gorge on a pre-Thanksgiving smorgasbord of boxing. The quartet of four-round prelim matches saw lightweight Jimmy Triggs win his pro debut opposite fellow novice Bob Battles, Pat O’Grady earn a unanimous decision over Jimmy Grimes in a welterweight bout, Dave Bryson score a TKO against Red Kelly when Kelly was unable to answer the bell for round two after striking his head on the canvas as a result of a knockdown at the end of the first, and Iowa’s own Young Autroy emerge victorious in his first and only fight by outpointing Frankie Craig in what was described as “a lively go.”

In the main event, Orville Bitney notched his second consecutive knockout at the Moose Auditorium in one week’s time, putting away Len Craig in the seventh frame whereas he had dispatched Young Joe Louis inside of two rounds at the very same venue seven days prior. Having become something of a short-term house fighter at the Moose Auditorium, Bitney would return on two subsequent occasions before 1949 came to a close, winning both before embarking on a four-bout winless streak to wrap up what would turn out to be an unremarkable 13-4-3 career.

“JoAnn Jolted” headlined the caption of a photo in the next day’s Council Bluffs Nonpareil that showed Pat Emerick connecting with a right hook to JoAnn Hagen’s chin during the fourth round of their title fight which preceded the Bitney/Craig feature attraction. “The punch was one of several which helped stop JoAnn who failed to come out for the next round,” continued the brief summary. An accompanying writeup of the night’s event reports that Hagen had started strong, dominating the action over the course of the first three rounds. The more petite Emerick then turned the tide and “belted around” Hagen so badly that JoAnn passed out in her corner after round four had come to a close. She was resuscitated by her seconds but declined to continue with the bout.

“I went at her with a combination attack. Left jabs to the head and hard rights to the body,” said Emerick in 1972. Living then with her husband Robert Lancaster in a small town in rural Tennessee populated by 150 people, Pat was a mother of ten children ranging in age from two to fifteen. “Girls can be beaten with body punches,” she elaborated to her interviewer.

“After three rounds of all the punches I could throw, Miss Hagen was finished, couldn’t answer the bell for the fourth round,” she continued, misremembering the conclusion, numerically anyway. “They gave me the championship trophy on a TKO.” In addition to the trophy, awarded to the winner in lieu of a title belt, Emerick had also been presented with a boxing sweater by the Indiana Golden Gloves Association.

Not long after her win over JoAnn Hagen, Pat was out for an innocent joyride with friends that turned into a near-fatal nightmare. When their car crashed, a jagged piece of the roof that had peeled back like a tuna can lid severed arteries in Emerick’s wrist and head. If not for the rapid response time of the Indiana State Police, Pat would undoubtedly have bled to death from her grievous injuries. A well-trained and quick-thinking patrolman applied constant pressure to the wounds and rode with her in the ambulance all the way to the hospital where he stood just outside the door.

“I asked the nurse why he was still there,” Emerick told a reporter well after the fact. “I found out he was waiting to write in his report that I had died.” She credits her survival to both the trooper and the fact that boxing was responsible for her above average physical condition. Pat was in danger of losing a leg to gangrene but recovered after seven surgeries and thirteen grueling months of therapy and rehabilitation. She was fortunate indeed to have won this existential battle but would unfortunately never compete in a boxing ring again.

“It seems to me there is more resistance to women doing the things they want to do now more than there was back then,” said Emerick when asked to reflect on her past as well as the general state of female representation in sports and society in 1972. “A woman should be allowed to do the things she is capable of doing.”

Pat Emerick was enshrined in the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2019 and passed away in August 2024 at the age of 93. It is unfortunate that almost every single personal memento from her boxing career was destroyed in a fire set by children playing with matches. It’s said that the only thing left intact was the golden glove that sat atop the trophy she won be defeating JoAnn Hagen.

Hagen wasn’t allowed much time to wallow in the disappointment of her loss to Pat Emerick, seeing as though she had a mere six days to prepare for a “Rasso-Boxing” match which was the brainchild of Champ Thomas. It’s not known whether Hagen made the eight-hour journey home to South Bend so that she could spend Thanksgiving with her family, but she would have had to turn right back around and trek back to Council Bluffs for her second appearance on a Champ Thomas promotion at the Moose Auditorium in very short order.

“The local promoter who introduced girl wrestlers and boxers to Council Bluffs in the last two cards will present a girls mixed bout Tuesday night,” stated the Nonpareil in its post-Thanksgiving Saturday edition. This would be Champ Thomas’ third consecutive Tuesday night show at the Moose Auditorium, the first of which two weeks before had featured the hometown debut of a childhood polio survivor turned professional wrestler named Beverly Lehmer, a seventeen-year-old junior at Thomas Jefferson High School who defeated Betty Marks.

On a card that was to once again feature Orville Bitney in the main event, Lehmer and JoAnn Hagen would square off against one another in a “five-round semi-windup” on November 29. “Each girl will use her favorite tactics,” declared a Nonpareil article the day before the event. “It will be the first time in ring history that girls have battled in a mixed match.” As an added attraction, Bev’s younger sister Carolyn signed on to face Jenny Lynn in a wrestling contest scheduled for one fall with a 20-minute time limit.

The manager of the Moose Auditorium not only employed Carolyn as a babysitter, he had gotten both her and Bev jobs at the venue working the ticket booth, concession stand, and bingo hall. It was Carolyn who first expressed an interest in wrestling, so the Moose Auditorium’s manager arranged for her to train with male grapplers, with her sister Bev initially tagging along as a reluctant workout partner. Bev quickly took a liking to it, relishing one particular session in which she was paired up with Shirley Temple’s brother George, who had been a pro wrestler for three years at that point, and hoisted him onto her shoulders for an airplane spin.

The day prior to fight night, JoAnn Hagen and Bev Lehmer came together for a cordial photo opportunity and shook hands for the cameras. With her hair done in a matronly style unflattering for a girl her age and dressed in somewhat overly modest, ill-fitting formal wear—a black jacket draped over a dark gray floor-length dress—Lehmer gives the impression of someone more mature than her seventeen years. Hagen stands perhaps two inches taller than her adversary, outfitted in a fashionably slim white coat with black collar and piping that coordinates nicely with the color of her skirt.

“The question ‘Can a girl wrestler defeat a girl boxer?’ remained unsolved Tuesday night,” began the account of the match between Hagen and Lehmer in the December 1 edition of the Council Bluffs Nonpareil. After having “pitched and tossed” around for the duration of five 3-minute rounds, the bout ended in a “stormy” yet anticlimactic draw before a record crowd for the Moose Auditorium, a paid attendance of 875.

After being body slammed by Beverly several times in the early going, Hagen cleared away the cobwebs enough to make the necessary adjustments, using her long left jab to keep Lehmer at arm’s length for the most part. The action spilled through the ropes and outside the ring in the fourth round, as the two women tumbled to the floor while intertwined in one another’s arms. JoAnn preceded Lehmer back into the ring, but both easily avoided being counted out by the referee. Being that the nature of their tussle was unprecedented, not to mention unchoreographed, it is easy to understand why the two women, approaching things from two different disciplines, were awkward and uneasy in their shared navigation of this rather peculiar terrain.

Bev’s sibling Carolyn put on a much more convincing show in her bout with Jenny Lynn which ended with the younger Lehmer sister being disqualified at the 16:20 mark for one too many altercations with referee Joe Smogye. An irate Carolyn gave Smogye one more kick for good measure before chasing Lynn out of the ring and down the aisle where she delivered a back body drop to Jenny on the concrete floor before being restrained by police. Now that’s entertainment.

A local boxing director by the name of Blaine Young “danced to a six-round decision over Jim Bovee” on the undercard, which also featured Pat O’Grady knocking out Jimmy Triggs in the third of four scheduled frames. Joey Gaiten was floored twice in the first sixty seconds of the evening’s main event by Jimmie Watson, substituting for the injured fan favorite Orville Bitney, a left hook being the coup de grace at 1:03.

The Lehmer sisters were back at the Moose Auditorium on December 12 to share another bill on a Champ Thomas promotion, this time teaming together to take on 215-pound Tiny Duke in a handicap match that went the full distance. Carolyn had presumably displayed better behavior on her last outing there in the meantime, wrestling to a 20-minute draw with Arky Martin.

Soon after, Bev had become so enamored of the sport that she dropped out of school and moved to Toledo, Ohio where she would embark on a full-fledged journey into pro wrestling which would take unforeseen twists and turns—some good, others not so much. She grew out her hair and dyed it blonde which she felt was a good look for the villainous ring persona she had crafted. For a finishing maneuver, Bev went with a full-nelson which was described as “a dangerous and devastating weapon.” Feuding with Penny Banner, Judy Glover, June Byers, Dot Dotson, Mae Young, and other fellow women’s wrestling pioneers, Lehmer joined the traveling troupe overseen by Billy Wolfe.

A former grappler who turned his attention toward promotion, Wolfe was both husband and manager of Mildred Burke and would later become notorious for his improper conduct, both sexual and financial, involving the female wrestlers supposedly under his care. Although she appears to have endured her two and a half-year association with Wolfe without falling prey to his physical lechery, Bev did say that he took 50% of every woman’s earnings and concluded succinctly but categorically, “I didn’t like him.”

Lehmer’s career was cut short by an ill-advised marriage to a man she had known only one week and a prolonged struggle with alcoholism. Beverly would eventually beat the bottle, craftily repel a stalker who had read about her in The Ring magazine, and, in her later years, undergo three replacement surgeries for her hip and shoulders. Somewhat embarrassed about her wrestling past at 77 years old, she died at her home in Estes Park, Colorado on August 30, 2010. This was, coincidentally, the very same day she was to have received a coin commemorating 34 years of sobriety.

In the years following her pair of debacles in Council Bluffs, JoAnn Hagen continued to make a name for herself in the fight game and beyond. Wearing heavily-padded 16-ounce gloves to appease the local athletic commission, she won a six-round decision over Nancy Parker, a Chicago-based fighter, in June 1950. Staged at the Radio Center in Huntington, West Virginia by a regional boxing and wrestling promoter named Dick Deutsch, this was the first female bout in the state’s history.

Unquestionably, the highlight of Hagen’s career came in 1954 when she bested trailblazer Barbara Buttrick over eight rounds in front of 1,200 eyewitnesses at the Victoria Pavilion in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The first women’s bout to be broadcast over the radio, this would prove to be the only time Buttrick would go down to defeat in 32 fights, with Hagen's 30-pound weight advantage no doubt a huge factor.

Hagen was a guest on the July 22, 1956 broadcast of the popular game show What’s My Line? where she shocked the panelists and studio audience alike by divulging her vocation as “professional boxer.” Four months later, JoAnn was invited along with her friend and fellow South Bend native Phyllis Kugler on to The Steve Allen Show which billed them as “Champion Women Boxers.” Coming onstage in evening gowns, they were asked to change into their boxing gear behind a screen as Allen continued the interview while playfully shielding his eyes with one hand. After emerging, Hagen exchanged a few mock punches with Allen before sparring lightly with Kugler.

During her stay in New York for the Steve Allen taping, JoAnn paid a visit to Jack Dempsey’s Broadway Bar and Restaurant where she was flabbergasted by the fact that the legendary heavyweight champion asked for her autograph after she had first requested his.

While on The Steve Allen Show, Hagen and Kugler announced that they would be meeting one another for a fight the following month. A supposed championship match, it was booked for December 13 as a four-round featured attraction on a variety show taking place at St. Joseph High School in their shared hometown of South Bend. Hagen was the obvious aggressor for the duration of the first three frames, scoring a knockdown and bloodying Phyllis’ nose. Kugler, who had been allowed to wear headgear for some strange reason, did manage to mount a comeback and stunned JoAnn at the end of the fourth and final round. Boos resounded throughout the auditorium as a split decision was rendered in Phyllis Kugler’s favor.

Rumors quickly circulated that the fix was in on Kugler’s behalf and, worse yet, that it had been her and JoAnn’s co-manager Johnny Nate who was behind it. Whether true or not, Hagen felt irreparably betrayed by her two former confidantes and, disgusted about the whole affair as well as being denied a rematch, never again laced up a pair of gloves.

She enlisted in the Marine Corps, got married, and started a family which she raised in South Bend where she remained until her death in 2004 at the age of 73. Rare was the occasion when JoAnn Hagen spoke about her journey in the fight game, up to and including her historic 1949 misadventures in Council Bluffs, Iowa when she boxed and grappled her way through the Thanksgiving holiday.

Sources:

Ken Beck. Lady Boxing Champ of the World (Wilson Post, May 10, 2016)

Greg Oliver. Beverly Lehmer Was Woman Wrestler of ‘50s, ‘60s (Slam Wrestling, September 9, 2010)

Tim Rohwer. CB Woman Beat Polio to Become Professional Wrestler (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, September 9, 2010)

Malissa Smith. A History of Women’s Boxing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014)

Before the Battle (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 29, 1949)

Bitney to Meet Gaiten Tuesday, Mixed Match to Involve Girls (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 27, 1949)

Bluffs Girls Will Wrestle…Lehmers on Goodfellow Program (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, December 9, 1949)

Boxing Tuesday, 8:30 P.M. Moose Auditorium (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 19, 1949)

Champ Thomas (The Marysville Advocate, May 20, 1954)

Champ Thomas Is No Stranger Here (St. Cloud Times, October 7, 1953)

Eating Leather (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, December 1, 1949)

Ex-Boxer Says She’d Let Her Daughters Box (The Ithaca Journal, March 22, 1972)

Girl Gladiators Settle Nothing, Jimmie Watson Chills Gaiten (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, December 1, 1949)

JoAnn Hagen Profile (WBAN—accessed at https://www.womenboxing.com/Hagen.htm)

JoAnn Hagen Fails To Last…Orville Bitney Kayoes Len Craig (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 23, 1949)

JoAnn Jolted (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 23, 1949)

Lehmer, Hagen In ‘Rasso-Boxing (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 26, 1949)

Links to the Past: Michiana History—Record Detail: Bendix Facilities in South Bend (St. Joseph County Public Library—accessed at http://www2.sjcpl.org/db/historydb/recorddetail/rec/603)

O’Grady Signed for Ring Card, Champ Thomas Is Rounding Card (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, November 28, 1949)

boxrec.com

cagematch.com

councilbluffslibrary.org

Presumption, or the Fate of Polly Fairclough

(An elderly Polly with heavyweight contender Jack Doyle)

As an esteemed pioneer of women’s boxing in the 1950s, Barbara Buttrick, known as England’s Mighty Atom of the Ring, broke a good deal of new ground in her heyday. Being a nonagenarian has done little to impede Barbara’s ability or desire to lead the charge as a highly respected flagbearer for female fighters. 

When the International Boxing Hall of Fame finally saw fit to induct women into its hallowed halls, Barbara was rightfully granted the privilege of standing at the head of the Class of 2020, which also included Christy Martin and Lucia Rijker as well as promoter Kathy Duva. “Of course, I’ve been asked many times what I was trying to prove. Nothing,” Buttrick, the oldest living female prizefighter, stated during her induction speech. “I was asked what I was fighting for. Respect.”

As a little lass of perhaps ten or twelve, by her recollection, the athletically-inclined Buttrick indulged a pair of favorite pastimes in the streets of Hornsea, the charming coastal town in Yorkshire County in which she grew up—soccer and fighting. Barbara’s primary preteen adversary was a neighborhood boy a year and a half younger than she was, but the same approximate size, and the two would get together to engage in fisticuffs on a fairly regular basis. When she wasn’t mixing it up, presumably not only holding her own but getting the better of the exchanges with her male counterpart on many occasions, Buttrick would gather her friends so that she could organize a spirited game of soccer, or at least urge them to sprint across town kicking the ball around pell-mell and willy-nilly. 

When she was fifteen, Barbara’s two passions would serendipitously cross paths, setting the determined youngster on a collision course with her destiny as a pugilistic trailblazer. Buttrick and her friends bulldozed their way into one of her friend’s homes after a particularly rowdy and muddy session with the soccer ball, but were halted by the girl’s mother who understandably insisted that they at least clean off their filthy shoes before running amok through the house. A newspaper being the nearest thing at hand, the mom tore out pages of the Sunday Dispatch for each girl to use as an impromptu rag.

Before she could busy herself with the task at hand, Barbara was simultaneously distracted and fascinated by a photograph on the sheet she was handed that depicted a female fairground boxer, accompanying an article titled “Polly the Champ.” She sat down and devoured the story immediately.

“It was reading about Polly Fairclough some years ago that first inspired me to take up boxing as my profession,” acknowledged Buttrick in 1954.

Just as Victor Frankenstein assembled a patchwork creature in the pages of Mary Shelley’s novel, so too has the story of Polly Fairclough been stitched together from various sources, most of which are at odds with the others, her legend as it exists today a composite of unsubstantiated details appropriated from a confusing genealogy, family folklore which has no doubt been embellished throughout generations’ worth of retellings, the unreliable accounts Polly gave of her personal biography late in life, and the 1997 documentary My Great-Grandmother Was a Boxer which wove all of these elements of fact and fiction into one fantastic yarn.

Universal Pictures contract player Edward Van Sloan, fresh off his role as the scholarly vampire hunter Van Helsing opposite Bela Lugosi in Dracula, appears in the prologue for Frankenstein (as well as in the role of Dr. Waldman) wherein he parts a curtain to step onto a stage and issue moviegoers “a word of friendly warning” about the thrilling, shocking, horrifying nature of what is about to unfold in the 1931 film adaptation. 

While there may be nothing about Polly Fairclough’s tale that will “subject your nerves to such a strain” as Frankenstein did, I feel that it would likewise be “a little unkind” to proceed any further without cautioning the reader that separating truth from myth in this case is all but impossible, bordering on folly, just as much as permitting and even encouraging the interaction of the two mischievous playmates known as fact and fiction is vital to one’s pure enjoyment of the following narrative. To borrow Van Sloan’s closing remarks from his tongue-in-cheek preamble to Frankenstein, “Well, we’ve warned you…”

Born in Whitehaven, Lancashire, England to a family of circus folk in 1881, Polly Fairclough’s given name is listed as Mary Agnes Taylor although her father James, a horse dealer and trainer, is identified by the last name Thornton. Her mother, the former Alice Brindle, was a trapeze artist who died after suffering a substantial fall during one of her high-flying performances.

Seemingly destined for the life of a carny, Polly’s act was that of a strongwoman, thrilling the crowds by wrestling lions and lifting donkeys by her teeth. Polly wed a London-based pugilist by the name of John Fairclough in 1899, by which time she herself had been boxing for two years in the fairground booths. She would fight as many as 110 rounds in any given twenty-four hour period, unbiased in her predilection for blackening the eyes of both women and men and, at the age of sixteen, had her teeth knocked out by a sailor in Ipswich. Her smashed lips were sewn together right after the incident by an onsite doctor who used horsehair for the spontaneous procedure.

In her masterful book A History of Women’s Boxing, Malissa Smith quotes a July 1945 newspaper article that describes Polly as “a good-looking colleen, dark-haired and feminine, who was able to—and did—trade punches with the best fighters of her day.”

Speaking of which, Fairclough traveled to the United States in 1900 to challenge Women’s World Boxing Champion, Texas Mamie Donovan. A reticent Donovan no-showed the bout, thus forfeiting her title to Polly by default. Not content with claiming the championship on a technicality and seeing as though she had traveled all that way only to be left itching for a fight, Polly climbed into the ring with a man that evening instead. (*This much of the story we can pretty confidently dismiss as a speculative fabrication, as Mamie Donovan—who had been a wrestler and carnival bag puncher and would indeed go on to enjoy a successful venture into “the manly art”—wasn’t known to have laced up a pair of boxing gloves before 1905 when she began participating in smokers in and around her native Philadelphia.)

Among the notable fistic contemporaries of the opposite sex against whom Polly sparred and fought exhibitions were Battling Nelson, Digger Stanley, ‘Bombardier’ Billy Wells, and then-heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, not to mention the man Johnson had taken the title from and would become her second husband, Tommy Burns. The first woman to compete within the confines of the London Sporting Club in 1913, Fairclough was put through her paces by Burns in that very venue and the two were married soon thereafter. The scrap-happy couple shared a sizable home on Merrion Strand Road in Dublin where they, animal lovers both, maintained an aviary housing more than 100 birds.

Polly, who had also displayed a proficiency in Greco Roman wrestling, quit the fight game in 1915, but a feature in a 1929 edition of The Police Gazette curiously tells of a “Mrs. Bobby Burns, a widow” who had previously fought as a featherweight and was now seeking a boxing license from the Maryland State Athletic Commission. “I’ll take on all comers in my class,” she scoffed at the timid office boy tasked with recording her information. “They’re all a lotta palookas.”

Regarded in certain circles as “cultured and cordial, well-mannered and gracious, with a great sense of humor,” Polly eventually parted ways with Tommy Burns and fell on hard times throughout her final two decades. She took to selling her sensationalized life story to British tabloids to make a quick buck, which is how a teenaged Barbara Buttrick would have become acquainted with the saga of the legendary female fairground fighter back in Hornsea. 

Polly Fairclough-Burns outlived her similarly ill-fated ex-husband by four years, passing away in 1959 at the age of 77 in near-poverty and total obscurity.

Sources:

Don Burleson. Polly Burns (Polly Fairclough)—World Champion Lady Boxer, 1900 (http://www.travel- golf.cc/genealogy/burns_polly.htm)

Michelle Genz. Barbara Buttrick: Natives (Miami Herald, April 12, 1998—accessed at https://www.iwbhf.com/buttrick.htm)

Susan McCarver. Female Boxer Polly Burns Calls Male Boxers Palookas–1929 (http://www.wbanmember.com/female-boxer- polly-burns-call-male-boxers-palookas-1929/)

Polly Burns, How Much is Fact and Fiction? (https://www.womenboxing.com/Burns.htm)

Polly Fairclough Family Tree (https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/polly-fairclough- 24-15ttfm)

Polly Knocked the Men for Six (The Irish Times, November 29, 1997—accessed at https://www.irishtimes.com/news/polly- knocked-the-men-for-six-1.132160)

Malissa Smith. A History of Women’s Boxing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014)

Zing Tsjeng. A Pioneer of Women’s Boxing Looks Back on a Lifetime of Battles (Vice, March 6, 2017—accessed at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5e8wg/barbara-buttrick- womens-boxing-pioneer-interview)

University of Sheffield National Fairground and Circus Archive: Barbara Buttrick Collection (accessed at https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nfca/collections/barbarabuttrick)