Known as ‘The Frisco Kid’ after the City by the Bay which
was her hometown, flyweight Louise Loo made her boxing debut eight months after
the release of the Western comedy movie of the same name featuring Gene Wilder
and Harrison Ford. Paula Trichel was Loo’s costar on March 6, 1980, with Louise
winning a unanimous four-round decision on the undercard of a show at the Santa
Rosa Veterans Memorial Building headlined by Shirley ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker.
Rematches in store for both women, Loo would again share
a bill with ‘Zebra Girl’ in Santa Rosa just six weeks later. Having earned a
split decision victory over Karen Bennett two years earlier, Tucker would make
a far more definitive statement this time by stopping Bennett in the sixth
round on April 18 to claim the vacant WBB world bantamweight title. Louise,
meanwhile, was matched opposite Paula Trichel once more.
“I was so worried about my little brother getting knocked
out that I just wasn’t ready to fight my own fight against Loo,” said Trichel
in reference to their initial scrap. With Paula looking on from ringside, her
brother Doug was put down for the count only 39 seconds into his first pro
fight by Johnny ‘Bang Bang’ Jackson, who would close out his career in 1990
with the dubious distinction of having won and lost each of his twenty-one
bouts by knockout, this being his lone triumph. “I know I shouldn’t have been
in the audience watching the fight, but I couldn’t help it,” Trichel admitted.
“It really bothered me when he hit his head so hard on the floor.”
Doug remained out of action for a little more than two
years, going 1-5 in 1982 before calling it quits. Without the distraction of
concerning herself about her brother’s welfare, Trichel performed well enough
in her return bout against Loo that the judges’ verdict was split this time,
although the decision was still rendered in Louise’s favor. The five-foot-two,
twenty-year-old Loo had made enough of an impression that she was already being
regarded as a future ring rival to ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker and potential successor
to the undefeated and newly-crowned bantamweight champion. The fact that Louise
fought at 112 pounds notwithstanding, the attention was flattering all the
same.
Loo’s three younger siblings, two brothers and a sister,
didn’t want her to fight at all. She had been helping to care for them since
their father died four years before, when Louise was sixteen, and they all
feared she might get seriously injured. “I don’t think boxing is that
hazardous,” Loo offered. “Women boxers wear aluminum chest protectors. We also
wear a cup.”
Her mother, who worked as a supervisor for Koret
sportswear, adopted a hands-off approach to her daughter’s prizefighting
ambitions. “She doesn’t tell me to quit, but she doesn’t encourage me either,”
said Louise. Of Chinese descent, Loo figured that boxing was the ideal way for
her to dismantle the cultural stereotype of the submissive Asian woman.
As a young girl, Louise was a standout in her Little Miss
Softball League and began bowling competitively at 13. Directing her attention
to tennis, Loo became the star player on her high school team and went on to
win the Golden Gate Tennis Club Tournament. “I was at the park one time when
this girl invited me to the bathroom with her. She beat me and took my watch
and my money. I wanted to fight back,” Loo recalled.
“She had a lot of aggression,” remarked her tennis coach
Mike Brewer. “She got into fights in the park with guys who were pushing people
around.” It was Brewer who urged Louise to take up boxing, becoming Loo’s
trainer and, eventually, her boyfriend.
“Finally, one day I heard about some girl fights in Santa
Rosa and I told Louise, ‘Let’s go down and see how good they are,’” said
Brewer. “We went to the fights and we both thought she could fight as good or
better than those girls.” Studying criminology at San Francisco’s City College
all the while, Loo began a workout regimen which consisted of hitting the heavy
bag and speed bag, skipping rope, pushups, sit-ups, and a few rounds of
shadowboxing for nine months prior to her debut fight, after a while adding
weightlifting to her routine which increased over time from three to six days a
week.
Initially turned away from Newman’s Gym at Leavenworth
and Eddy Streets in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, Loo was admitted
only after intervention from the State Athletic Commission forced them into
compliance. Citing sex discrimination as the reason behind taking this
extraordinary measure, the Commission threatened to have Newman’s shut down
otherwise and ‘The Frisco Kid’ was saddling up soon enough for the sunrise of
her journey into the hurt business.
Louise Loo’s weapons of choice were black boxing gloves,
which she preferred to the standard red as she felt they had a more menacing
look, her version of the pair of six-shooters every good gunslinger on TV and
in the movies keep at their hip for when the shit hits the wind. The petite
but powerful southpaw played her own ace in the hole, a solid left hook, to
break the jaw of Sue Rubacalva at the Cow Palace.
She also did some damage to her former sparring partner
Angel Rodriguez in a bout she would end up getting stopped in. “I broke her
nose in the first round, but I couldn’t put her away. Then I ran out of gas,”
Louise confessed. Accepting this as a valuable learning experience on the
importance of stamina, Loo afterwards began every morning with three miles of
sprints around the polo fields at Golden Gate Park. “I didn’t run much when I
was young. I have to build up endurance,” said Loo.
Sparring, Louise found, was difficult to come by.
“There’s no other woman boxer around the gym and they won’t let me spar with
the guys. They’re afraid I might get hurt,” she explained. The women from the
nearby Armory at 14th and Mission weren’t much help. “I tried to spar with them
but it didn’t work out,” Louise complained. “They wanted to do things their
way.” Frustrating as well was the meager pay—$50 a round, 20% of which went to
her two cornermen—and minimal promotion afforded to female boxers. “There’s
hardly any publicity. Few people know we’re around,” Loo stated matter of
factly.
WBB world flyweight titleholder Rosi Reed retired in
January 1982, leaving the vacated belt to be squabbled over by the division’s
top two 112-pound contenders, Louise Loo and Angel Rodriguez, with an October
date penciled on the calendar for the coronation. In the meantime though,
Louise split another pair of fights in Santa Rosa with her old foe Paula
Trichel, losing a unanimous decision in May but avenging that defeat five weeks
later by way of a third-round knockout.
Still ranked #2, Loo was paired off against Darlene
Valdez in a title elimination match at the El Paso Civic Center on September 10
with the winner to take on the top-rated Rodriguez for the flyweight
championship. Fighting out of Albuquerque, Valdez was coming off an impressive
victory over former world featherweight champion Toni Lear Rodriguez. The Texas
crowd rewarded both women’s vigorous efforts with a standing ovation after the
final bell, but it would be Valdez who would be rewarded by the judges who gave
her the decision despite having been deposited onto the canvas by Loo in both
the first and third rounds.
Her immediate title shot derailed, Louise got back on
track in November by dropping Nancy ‘Little Rock’ Thompson of San Diego three
times in the first minute of the second round before referee Jack Scheberies
stepped in to wave off the fight. The WBB flyweight title remained unclaimed as
of 1983, and it appeared as though Loo and Angel Rodriguez would finally face
off for the still vacant belt.
With Loo now ranked in the pole position and Rodriguez at
#2 according to the fight poster, they were scheduled to tangle with one
another on June 23 in the co-main event at San Francisco’s Galleria at 15th and
Kansas Streets. Their title fight was advertised up until the day before the
event, but no result appears in newspaper accounts of the card after the fact
which can only mean that the women’s bout was canceled for reasons unknown.
In fact, the next reported sighting of Louise Loo inside
a boxing ring wouldn’t take place until June 29, 1985 when she would come out
on the wrong end of a decision against Del Pettis in a four-round prelim at the
Municipal Stadium in John Steinbeck’s old stomping ground of Salinas which was
disparaged by Mike Wennergren writing for The Californian as “more of a
novelty than anything else.”
After a lackluster loss to kickboxer and pugilistic
greenhorn Tanya Macwood, ‘The Frisco Kid’ hung up her black gloves for good and
rode that old dusty trail off into the sunset.
Sources:
Fred Herrera. San Francisco’s Loo Comes Looking For Fight
(El Paso Times, September 8, 1982)
Ralph Leef. They’ll Carry Her Out This Time (Santa Rosa
Press Democrat, April 17, 1980)
Brian Libby. Shirley Gets Another First (Sonoma West
Times and News, March 20, 1980)
Jack Pokress. Pioneer Boxers: Louise Loo (WBB Glove, July
1980—accessed through WBAN at https://www.wbanmember.com/loo-louise/)
Mike Wennergren. Cavezuela Thrills Home Crowd (The
Californian, July 1, 1985)
Ken Wong. At 112, She Dishes Out a Pretty Mean One-Two
(San Francisco Examiner, February 17, 1982)
Ecstasy Amid the Brazen Brutality (Petaluma
Argus-Courier, March 8, 1980)
Zebra Girl Keeps String Intact (Santa Rosa Press
Democrat, April 20, 1980)
Caballero Triumphs in Pro Ring Debut (El Paso Times,
September 11, 1982)
Night at the Fights (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November
4, 1982)
Louise Loo Profile (WBAN—accessed at https://www.womenboxing.com/Loo.htm)
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