Ebanie Bridges Captures First World Title, Skye Nicolson Dominant in Second Pro Victory

 

Whether it’s in the boxing ring or on social media and reality TV, Ebanie Bridges continues to live her best life, as the kids say these days. One of the fringe benefits Ebanie seems to enjoy the most about her celebrity status is flaunting her assets to get a rise out of people—in more ways than one, if you catch my drift.

Case in point, Friday’s weigh-in. As if she were instead sashaying down the runway at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, the cheeky Bridges—pun very much intended—strode onto the stage in a lacy little green and white g-string, with bra to match, which made Eddie Hearn once again chuckle, blush, and coyly look away like a schoolboy busted sneaking a peek at a lingerie model in one of his sister’s catalogs. Bridges playfully offered him a pair of sunglasses to mask his embarrassment, but he pocketed them instead. 

Because of what she will (or won’t) be wearing, her walks onto the scales are every bit as anticipated by boxing enthusiasts of the male persuasion—and very possibly more than a few women too—as the following day’s fight. Who are we kidding? Ebanie’s weigh-ins have become voyeuristic media events unto themselves which her bouts can only hope to live up to. For what it’s worth, she seems to absolutely relish the challenge, making for a nearly unanimous win/win scenario.

“Don’t watch my weigh-ins if you don’t like it. I don’t really care to be honest, because I am not going to change,” she stated defiantly on Steve Bunce’s podcast. “I love weigh-in dates, it’s a cool day and it’s the start towards the fight. I have a lot of fun.”

Bridges had been sidelined since suffering an injury to her right hand in the process of toughing out an extremely slim and somewhat debatable decision over Mailys Gangloff this past September. Though the hand was gruesomely swollen upon removing her gloves, x-rays revealed that Bridges had not broken or even fractured it as she feared at first. The internal bruising still required significant time to heal, necessitating Ebanie’s six-month layoff.

Her victory over Gangloff was the saucy Aussie’s second in a row after coming up on the wrong end of the judges’ verdict in her first shot at a world title, an April 2021 donnybrook with now-former WBA bantamweight champion Shannon Courtenay, who relinquished the belt last October by tipping the scales two pounds over for her defense against Jamie Mitchell and losing the fight to boot.

In the meantime, Bridges’ only tussle was with Instagram over a New Years’ Eve photo which was removed from her profile showing Ebanie wearing only barely-there underpants and strategically-placed boxing gloves and captioned, “Buckle up it’s going to be another year of punching face, success, learning, growing, networking, trending, internet breaking and of course fun.”

Bridges has also been competing on a military training-type reality show called SAS Australia, confessing during one episode to selling her used gym socks to foot fetishists for $1,000. “Easy money,” Bridges said in her defense. While I imagine this could be construed by some as “networking”—no matter the negligible shape into which it stretches the definition—how an exchange of hard-earned cash for stinky socks qualifies as “fun” is admittedly beyond me. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, so more power to her. But, let’s concentrate our focus instead on the “punching face” aspect of Ebanie’s New Year’s resolution. Which is why we’re all here in the first place, right? Right.

Ten months shy of her 40^th birthday, Maria Cecilia Roman (16-5-1) is a prizefighting veteran of eleven years, and the face Bridges would be punching on Saturday. Roman came into Leeds as the IBF’s reigning and defending 118-pound titleholder, a distinction she has held since 2017 when she unseated then-champion Carolina Raquel Duer by split decision. Among her six successful defenses was a 2018 rematch with Duer which ended with the exact same outcome.

Making her U.S. debut last February, and only her second appearance outside of her native Argentina to that point, Roman was upset by 3-0 Melissa Odessa Parker in an eight-round non-title match. Her four other losses all occurred consecutively early in her career, followed by a draw which ran her winless streak to five fights against just one win that came in her inaugural pro bout.

Bridges was realistic about the fact that if she were to succeed against a fighter of Roman’s caliber, adjustments and improvements would have to be made during training with her coach Mark Tibbs. “There can’t be one fucking mistake,” she admitted a few days out from fight night. That said, she had no doubt about the fact that she would walk away from the scrap with the IBF belt in her possession. 

From the get-go, Bridges busily obscured Roman's field of vision with her left jab—something she had not previously been particularly proficient with—while using the right hand to throw hooks, short uppercuts, and body shots. The defending champion attempted to get some offense going midway through the third round, missing badly with a one-two which Bridges crouched beneath and shot back up with a six-punch combination of her own—four body blows and a pair of hooks courtesy of each fist.

Jabs, body shots, and uppercuts were the evening's specials on Bridges' menu, and she served them up repeatedly and successfully to build an early lead on the scorecards. Ebanie's stamina was a question mark coming into this bout and, sure enough, she did begin to show signs of tiring as soon as the end of round four. Roman took advantage of the openings her challenger allowed with increasing frequency but, while her defense became a little more lax than it should have been, Bridges never relented on offense.

Roman is not a power puncher, all of her sixteen wins having gone the distance, so Bridges had little to worry about in terms of sustaining damage from the champion's punches. However, she couldn't allow for Roman to tally up points enough to pull even or sneak ahead in the second half of the fight. Ebanie's footwork and head movement were vastly improved from her previous efforts and played a crucial role in her success in evading a good deal of Roman's strikes. When Bridges remained stationary with her feet planted, however, Roman was able to let her hands go and land some nice shots.

The bigger and stronger of the two, Ebanie used her muscular frame and lower center of gravity to bully the champion about in the hopes of stifling or smothering Roman's punches. Round ten was fought at close quarters, both combatants slugging away and, if Roman possessed greater raw power, things could conceivably turned out differently down the stretch as she nailed Ebanie with two straight rights in the closing moments. 

Ultimately, though, it was Ebanie Bridges, with her ambidextrous body attack and sheer will to prove to her naysayers that you can't judge a book by its cover, who got to hear ring announcer David Diamante call out the words “...and new...” after ten hard-fought rounds. By scores of 100-91 and 97-93 (x 2), Bridges won the IBF bantamweight world title and intends to make her next outing a unification bout between the winner of the Jamie Mitchell/Shannon Courtenay rematch.      

It turned out to be a good night for fighters from Down Under as, earlier in the evening, Australian southpaw Skye Nicolson returned to action a mere three weeks after making her successful pro debut, in which she earned a six-round unanimous decision over Jessica Juarez in the previously undefeated featherweight’s hometown of San Diego.

This time out, Nicolson was matched opposite the battle-scarred and luckless ‘Lady Luck’ Bec Connolly (3-11), who rode into Leeds on a five-fight winless streak. This skid included a third-round TKO at the hands of Ebanie Bridges last April, in addition to points losses to upwardly mobile prospects like Rachel Ball, Ellie Scotney, Ramla Ali, and Maria Cecchi. Would fate smile upon ‘Lady Luck’ in Leeds? Not likely.

Nicolson made things interesting as soon as action commenced by switching between her long right jab and lead lefts to begin her exchanges, throwing Connolly into a state of confusion from which she never recovered. Skye transacts her business with the composure and confidence of a seasoned professional, but faced nothing in the way of adversity from the more experienced Connolly to challenge her youthful, effortless swagger, not to mention the fact that she holds her hands down by her hip more than she really ought to. You can get away with that sort of thing until you can't, which will be a learning experience for her in the near future, no doubt.      

It will be fascinating to chart Nicolson's forward progress through the paid ranks. Already, she exhibited a greater output and more varied punch selection on Saturday night than she did in her first fight with Jessica Juarez. After having her way with a bloodied and battered Bec Connolly for six rounds of what amounted to little more than a spirited sparring session, Skye was awarded the shutout victory. Connolly had already signed her name to a contract for her next fight, an April 15 date opposite Nina Hughes who, like Skye Nicolson, will be competing in her second pro bout.        

An esteemed amateur competitor with more than 100 victories on her resume, Nicolson was a 2018 Commonwealth champion and represented Australia at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. She advanced to the quarterfinals, only to lose by split decision to Karriss Artingstall of Great Britain. She has stated her desire to box on as many as seven occasions this year—staying plenty busy, building her public profile, and picking up as much experience as possible in the learn as you earn professional fight game.      

Nancy Thompson's Boxing Career May Not Have Been a Hollywood Dream, But it Was Far From a Nightmare

“Whatever you do,” Nancy Thompson famously warns her boyfriend Glen in A Nightmare on Elm Street, “don’t fall asleep.” Playing opposite a then-unknown Johnny Depp in the franchise’s original slasher flick, Heather Langenkamp portrayed Nancy Thompson, ultimately going toe-to-toe with the Christmas-sweater-wearing Elm Street boogeyman in three movies while becoming one of the most memorable “final girls” of the 1980s and 90s.

Five-foot two, 112-pound Nancy ‘Little Rock’ Thompson, a female prizefighter of the 1970s and 80s, may have a legacy that is far less chronicled or enduring than that of her fictional counterpart (in name, anyway) but, interestingly, she did once lace up the gloves opposite a former actress and was put to sleep in her boxing debut. At least this Nancy Thompson didn’t have to contend with Freddy Krueger once she got to dreamland.

Having grown up in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, Nancy later ventured across the country and settled on the west coast, San Diego specifically, where she worked as a car detailer at a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership. When her daily shift was over, Thompson would head straight to the 5^th Avenue Gym and train with Joe Lopez.

“I used to train in the naval gyms—you know—just fooling around and I guess that’s how I really first got discovered,” said Thompson.. “I was banging on the bags and folks started to say that if I could hit that hard I should take up boxing. One day a sports writer came in and wanted to do a story on me. We went down to the gym and Joe Lopez was with me as a sort of trainer. He’s been my trainer ever since.”

A Korean War veteran and lifelong fight fan, Lopez first set up a makeshift training facility in the backyard of his Clairemont home before founding the 5^th Avenue Gym in San Diego’s historic Gaslamp Quarter in 1969, bringing through its doors established local scrappers such as Archie Moore and Ken Norton. Not to mention countless young hopefuls like Nancy Thompson, who stood apart from the rest for obvious reasons.

“I had some second thoughts for sure. I hated to have a girl in here,” confessed an initially reluctant Lopez when asked about deciding to take Nancy under his wing. “But she kept hanging around, so I finally said it was okay and let her come in.” Her work ethic and undeniable dedication soon altered Joe’s skeptical mindset and he elected to champion her cause.

“I’m pretty tough. I hit pretty good, too. It doesn’t bother me to get in there with the guys. I’m not scared or anything,” Thompson boasted. “It’s very hard to get any competition because I’m the only woman pro boxer in San Diego.”

Nancy’s first professional competitor would be Rosetta ‘Rosi’ Reed, with whom she would tangle on October 23, 1978 at Strongbow Stadium in Reed’s hometown of Bakersfield. Born in Tehachapi but raised in Mojave, Rosi moved with her family to Bakersfield during her high school years. To pick up some pocket money while attending Bakersfield College, she took a job delivering papers for the Rosedale Roadrunner, which was owned and operated by her soon-to-be husband Tony.

After they married, Rosi dropped out and began covering politics and boxing for the Roadrunner. Always good with her hands, Reed also assumed a hands-on managerial role in her stepson’s auto body shop when he opted to depart, soon disassembling and rebuilding car engines with relative ease.

(Rosi Reed)

Rosi decided to go from sportswriter to prizefighter in the late 70s, passing a written test with flying colors and demonstrating that she was proficient at applying handwraps, which she was required to do by the athletic commission for a reason that was never made readily apparent to her. Nevertheless, she put this skill to good use while training a local middleweight named Javier ‘Harvey’ Solomon following her abbreviated boxing career which kicked off with a second-round knockout of Nancy Thompson in the pro debut for each woman.

“The first couple of times I was in the ring, I was nervous,” Reed later admitted. “I looked at the other fighter and thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ But I knocked Thompson out in two rounds anyway.” Rosi’s raucous supporters displayed their appreciation by showering the Strongbow Stadium ring for fifteen minutes with fistfuls of coins and dollar bills. Rosi and Tony scooped up the spoils, bringing home an additional $135. Her May 30, 1980 outing at Strongbow Stadium would earn Reed more than a pile of spare change, as she would knock out Muncie, Indiana’s Bonnie Prestwood inside of six rounds to become the world flyweight champion.

The first ever all-female boxing card was held on February 11, 1979 in Hawthorne, California. Featuring matches pitting Cora Webber against Lydia ‘Squeaky’ Bayardo, Shirley ‘Zebra Girl’ Tucker against Toni Lear Rodriguez, and Lady Tyger Trimiar against Carlotta Lee in the main event, Nancy Thompson was supposed to have opened the show with a five-round contest opposite Santa Monica’s Graciela Casillas.

Although the weight differential between the two was deemed too substantial for her scheduled bout with Casillas to go ahead as planned, Thompson showed up regardless, hopeful that a viable option could be arranged. “I had five or six fights with guys,” Nancy said. “Amateur bouts they were, and then I had one pro fight. I’m trying to get back into the heat tonight.” Unfortunately, she would be left out in the cold that particular evening.

“Right now I weigh about 110 lbs., so I’m a flyweight. But when I first started training I had to put on some pounds as I was only 101,” she recalled. “Before I started boxing I was always a very physical-type person. I’m small for my size but I have a pretty good punch in my hands—mainly my left. And I can hit pretty hard! I train six days a week and I run every morning. The same things a guy would do … spar, hit the bags, condition myself.”

Next up for Nancy Thompson, on April 4, 1980, was Amy Levitt, who had won her first fight by outpointing fellow novice Denise Coleman over four rounds at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium three months prior, after walking away from a promising future in film and television. First appearing on the soap opera One Life to Live in 1968, Levitt scored bit parts in the movies Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? and Dog Day Afternoon, as well as a recurring role in the four-part TV mini-series Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers and return visits to The Streets of San Francisco in 1976 and 77.

“I hated Hollywood. I couldn’t understand that world—the shallow people, the phoniness, and the lack of values,” said Levitt. “I realized that I loved life too much to waste it on a career as a Hollywood actress. That was when I found boxing.” Amy was criticized by family, friends, and peers for deliberately choosing to get punched in her pretty face for a living.

“That hurt is nothing compared to the hurt you suffer in life when you don’t stand up for yourself,” was Levitt’s response. “The image of a woman fighting is shocking. But there’s something special about it to me. If a woman can fight, anyone can. We all can fight. People have to stand up for what they believe in.”

(Amy Levitt)

Nancy Thompson outworked Amy Levitt to earn the four-round decision at the San Bernardino Arena, after which she said, “I think women’s boxing is kind of a new frontier. I think it’s going to be real popular, but it will take some time. I just have to be patient, that’s all.”

Later that year, Nancy would split a pair of fights with Rochelle Ragsdale before falling victim to two more knockouts—against ‘The Frisco Kid’ Louise Loo in 1982 and Del Pettis thirteen unlucky months later. Brief as her career may have been, Thompson deserves due credit for traversing the unforgiving terrain of boxing’s new frontier for women in the 1970s and 80s.

It’s like what Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson says in the third Nightmare on Elm Street movie, The Dream Warriors: “I’m not gonna kid you, this is as dangerous as it gets. If you die in this dream, it’s for real. Nobody has to go in that doesn’t want to.”

Sources:

John Cox. Rosetta ‘Rosi’ Reed: Unconventional Path Led Kern Native to Life of Distinction (Bakersfield Californian, November, 3, 2021)

Zach Esparza. Real People: Attorney Recalls Her Days as Boxing Champ (Bakersfield.com, August 29, 2014)

Sue Fox. Pioneer Boxing: Nancy Thompson (WBAN, July 1, 1980)

Pretty Actress Gives Up Show Biz For New Career As A Brawling Boxer (Weekly World News, January 6, 1981)

This Is Your Life, Joe Lopez (sportofboxing.com)

imdb.com

Lucia Rijker vs. Christy Martin: The Super-Fight That Never Happened and The Grudge That Hasn't Ended

 

"Everybody from right now

To over there and back

The louder they come, the harder they crack...

First, it's hello, goodbye

Then push and then crash

But we're all gonna make it at that Million Dollar Bash."

—Bob Dylan and The Band (“Million Dollar Bash”)

All is Unfair in Love and War

Every fighter, no matter the measure of his or her force and fortitude, has their frailties. Greek mythology tells us that Thetis baptized her infant son Achilles in the River Styx, hoping to make him immortal. She may have succeeded if not for the fact that the ankle by which she held him remained untouched by its tempestuous waters, leaving his heel vulnerable to the poison arrow shot by Paris while Achilles, a Trojan War hero, knelt at the Temple of Apollo to offer a sacrifice in honor of his betrothed, and his assassin’s knowing sister, Polyxena.

Hobbled by a ruptured Achilles tendon, the combat-tested and battle-ready Lucia Rijker, an undefeated veteran of 37 kickboxing contests and 17 prizefights, was not only forced to withdraw from her years-in-the-making million-dollar match against Christy Martin but ultimately abandon the sport that she and her longtime antagonist had helped propel into the public consciousness on behalf of women everywhere, whether or not that was their original intention.

Martin made no bones about her feministic ambivalence and that any benefits to the betterment of female prizefighting resulting directly from her achievements were purely coincidental. “I’m not out to make a statement about women in boxing, or even women in sports,” Christy admitted in Richard Hoffer’s famous April 15, 1996 Sports Illustrated cover story. “I’m not trying to put women in the forefront, and I don’t even think this fascination has much to do with that. This is about Christy Martin.”

Rijker, meanwhile, offered this very distinct counterpoint. “I’ve been fighting my whole life for the rights of women all over the world. There is so much more,” she reflected in a 2008 Curve magazine article, “and there’s also a time to start to give back and to share. It’s a natural cycle, and when you follow the natural cycle then your life goes well.”

Her professional pride and personal life having both absorbed some bumps and bruises through the intervening years, there was more to Rijker’s decision to walk away from boxing than just a compromised ankle.

Martin would compete irregularly for another seven years, divulging a long-guarded truth and returning from a consequentially horrific domestic attack in pursuit of an elusive milestone. For both Lucia and Christy—not to mention their opponents, forerunners, and successors—simply being females punching their way to respectability through the closed doors of boxing’s boys’ club was—and still is—an Achilles heel unto itself.

 

The Coalminer’s Daughter

Though her moniker is self-explanatory, Christy Martin’s accidental journey to the prize ring deserves accounting for. A Little League catcher then basketball player for Mullens High School and Concord College in her native West Virginia, freshman Christy Salters accepted her teammates’ challenge to participate in a local Tough Woman contest. Not only did she enter and outfight three other competitors for the $1,000 prize that night in 1987, but delivered repeat performances the following two years before graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in education.

Salters’ mother Joyce, in a reversal of the role typically reserved for the trepidatious parent, enthusiastically escorted Christy (who admittedly “didn’t know a jab from a hook”) to Bristol, Tennessee and into the gym of former light-heavyweight boxer turned trainer Jim Martin, who was so aghast at the prospect of working with a woman that he boasted about there being “no question I was going to have her ribs broke” as a preventive measure.

Instead, Christy proved herself in the rough and tumble gym wars sufficiently enough so that Martin became convinced by—and then smitten with—his new protégé and soon-to-be bride. Of course, his not terribly valiant first positive impression was that “maybe this woman can make me some money.” Which she would. But at what a cost.

With the exception of a lone hiccup against Andrea DeShong in her fifth paid outing (a majority decision loss which she avenged five months later and again prior to the Tyson/Holyfield bite fight in 1997), Christy Martin dazzled fight fans and Don King alike with her walk-forward aggression, knockout power, folksy mountain twang, and powder pink boxing garb.

Within five years, Christy went from fighting before tiny assemblies gathered at Tennessee smokers to an undercard highlighting former WBC heavyweight champion Pinklon Thomas at the Daytona Beach Howard Johnsons to knocking out Susie Melton in 40 seconds at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand on the same night that Julio Cesar Chavez lost his first fight (and WBC super-lightweight title) to Frankie ‘The Surgeon’ Randall and Felix Trinidad outpointed Hector Camacho in defense of his IBF welterweight championship.

So anti-climactic was the violent repossession of the WBC belt from short-term claimant Frank Bruno by a released and resurgent but hardly reformed Mike Tyson on March 16, 1996 that Christy Martin and Deirdre Gogarty transformed what was expected to be laughed off as a vaudevillian novelty into a show-stealing, headline-making six-round war of attrition.

Not only did Gogarty, an 8-3-2 Irish featherweight, astonish the attendees at the MGM Grand and Showtime PPV home audience (not to mention Martin) by picking herself up off the floor in the second round and exchanging firepower with her heavier and stronger opponent but by rocking Christy with a straight right which, in Jim Martin's unsentimental terminology, made her “bleed like a stuck pig.” It is famously referred to as the most profitable bloody nose in boxing history.

The brawl earned both women widespread acclaim from many previously skeptical boxing enthusiasts and the no-longer oblivious mainstream media, and made a household name of the victorious Christy Martin by way of her subsequent appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated bearing the supplemental tagline “The Lady is a Champ.” Following a contractual squabble, Don King would also include Christy as an added attraction to Tyson’s first-round knockout of WBA heavyweight champion Bruce Seldon, as well as Iron Mike’s TKO loss to Holyfield and its aforementioned cannibalistic sequel.

 

The Dutch Destroyer

Raised in working-class Amsterdam, Lucia Rijker was the last of four children born, in 1967, to her blonde Dutch mother and black immigrant father who earned his living bottling beer in a Heineken factory.   

It seems there was virtually nothing that the naturally gifted Rijker couldn’t do athletically. From practicing Judo at the tender age of six, Lucia went on to play tennis as well as earn a spot on the Dutch National Softball Team. She took up fencing at thirteen and won the Netherlands Junior Championship before following her brother into kickboxing, a craft she perfected at the famed Rotterdam gym of Johan Vos.

One draw would be the lone blemish on an otherwise flawless kickboxing career, four world title wins included amongst Lucia’s 36 victories. Indeed, the only loss Rijker ever suffered inside a squared circle, and a vicious one at that, occurred by way of second-round knockout to a male 13-1 New Zealand kickboxing champion named Somchai Jaidee in what was advertised as a ‘He vs. She’ Muay Thai exhibition at Amsterdam’s Sporthallen Zuid in 1994.

After relocating to Los Angeles and coming under the tutelage of trainer Freddie Roach at his Wild Card Gym (she would also work early on with Joe Goossen at the renowned Ten Goose Boxing Gym), Rijker joined the professional prizefighting ranks within a week of Christy Martin’s groundbreaking 1996 win over Deirdre Gogarty with a ninety-second destruction of 3-3 Melinda Robinson at the storied Olympic Auditorium.

Kelly Jacobs, Lucia’s second victim, survived for only thirteen additional seconds on a stacked card at Las Vegas’ Lawlor Events Center which also saw James Toney successfully defend his WBU light-heavyweight title against Montell Griffin and Micky Ward tough out a split decision over Manny Castillo, who filled in for the injured Julio Cesar Chavez.

Two homecoming fights in Holland later, the 4-0 Rijker returned stateside in search of a promotional deal and found one only when, being turned down by Don King who already had his hands full dealing with Christy Martin, she barged through the door of an initially dismissive Bob Arum after finding that a polite knock would simply not suffice.

Lucia’s first televised Top Rank fight in Corpus Christi, Texas was also her first true test, coming against future world champion Chevelle Hallback who had only one previous bout to her credit but, as of her last outing in 2021, possesses a 33-8-2 record with a resume that reads like a who’s who of female boxing. It took Rijker until the fifth and penultimate round to tire out, break down, and nearly pummel through the ropes her intense but inexperienced foe.

Lucia made a statement by knocking out Christy Martin’s only conqueror to that point, Andrea DeShong, in the third round on the undercard of the Oscar De La Hoya/Hector Camacho ‘Opposites Attack’ main event on September 13, 1997. Her last Top Rank appearance would come just over one year later at Foxwoods Resort when she claimed the vacant WIBO super-lightweight title with a second-round TKO of Marcela Eliana Acuna. A 50-8-2 six-time world champion who fought as recently as last November, Acuna had made her debut only nine months before the Rijker bout, losing on points over ten rounds to Christy Martin.

Bob Arum, evidently under the impression that he was not getting a satisfactory return on his investment, severed his eighteen month-long association with Lucia so that he could pour his vast resources into a far more profitable female commodity in the fist-fighting sex kitten, Mia St. John.

 

Unladylike Conduct

“Lucia doesn’t fight like a girl. She doesn’t come out and just go nuts. When the bell rings, she comes out and takes control,” remarked Emanuel Steward, who remembers first watching Rijker on a television set in the dressing room where he was wrapping Lennox Lewis’ hands for a heavyweight title fight.

“Turn around and look at that girl there,” Lewis instructed Emanuel. “She is so smooth. Whoa! I’ve never seen anybody fight that good!” Steward recalled that when the instant replay of Rijker’s knockout was shown, “the whole dressing room stopped to watch her.”

Steward said at the time, “Naturally, Christy Martin’s never going to fight her. If she do, it’ll be the end of Christy Martin.” He went on to opine, “The problem is there’s nobody around who can give her the challenge to really bring out her talent. It’s just unfortunate that she’s not able to fight as a man, because she would be the Sugar Ray Leonard of boxing right now in that weight division.”

Seeing as though Christy Martin had already been clocked on Rijker’s radar, HBO executives were keen on laying the groundwork for what was already being viewed as their inevitable super-fight as early as March 1997 with a hyped-up lead-in to Lucia’s donnybrook with Chevelle Hallback. On the Real Sports preview show, Martin not only called Rijker’s gender into question but implied that, if Lucia were in fact all woman, her musculature may have been arrived at through chemical enhancement. This set the nasty tone which would become the accompanying soundtrack to their rivalry.

Although the entire card would eventually get scrapped when title contender Henry Akinwande tested positive for Hepatitis-B shortly before his scheduled fight against heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield at Madison Square Garden in June 1998, Lucia Rijker tagged along to the press conference. Unbeknownst to Lucia, there was an ulterior motive behind her invitation.

Joining headliners Holyfield and Akinwande up on the dais at the House of Blues were undercard fighters Roberto Duran, William Joppy, and Christy Martin. Never before had Martin and Rijker been in the same place at the same time. Showtime executive Jay Larkin ran down to the floor with mic in hand, making a bee-line for Rijker.

“Hi, my name is Lucia Rijker,” she began, completely caught off guard and more than a little flustered. “I’d like to say to Evander that you’re the greatest, and the way you carry yourself, you’re really a role model for boxing, and I really appreciate that.”

Holyfield responded with a hearty “Thank you!” before Lucia shifted her focus. “And I have a question for Christy Martin,” she continued, fully wrapped up in the moment now. “I am Lucia Rijker. This is the first time we met, right here, so I want to take this opportunity to ask you to stand up and be a woman, and be a tough woman as you really are, because I know you are, and I want an answer from you. I’ve talked to your promoter. He’s willing to put up the fight, but he’s told me that you don’t want to, so now I’m here to talk to you. So now I’m asking you.”    

Martin’s reaction to being called out face to face in so public a forum was to go completely ballistic. “I’m not afraid to stand up and be a woman, because I am a woman, and we don’t have to doubt that in any way, shape, or form,” she exploded, shaking her finger at Rijker. “And if my promoter said I didn’t want to fight, then my promoter is giving out misinformation.”

Christy was on a roll and there was no stopping her tirade. “I think I’m the best woman fighter in the world, and I will prove that when given the opportunity,” she boasted. “But, as you maybe don’t know, this is a business, and with business there are a lot of other people involved besides the two of us. So if Don King will give up my promotional rights, or sell my promotional rights, whatever it takes for the fight to be made, I will be very happy for the fight to be made. But you have six months, because I am going to be a mother after that.”

Lucia was ready to take Martin at her word on the spot. “I accept the offer,” she said. “We will have the fight within six months.” At the conclusion of the event, Rijker approached Christy with one hand extended in a good will gesture while using the other to tap Martin on the shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” Christy shouted, whirling around. “Touch me one more time and we’re going to fight right now!” Unable to deny herself the sheer pleasure of seeing what sort of response she would get, Lucia once again tapped Martin’s shoulder. Before fists began to fly, Christy’s entourage sprang into action, physically extricating Martin from the volatile situation.

“God, I wanted to fight her so bad,” Rijker stated in exasperation. Instead, Christy would continue to conduct their feud strictly in the press. Besides referring to Rijker as a “steroid dyke,” Martin would suggest that someone “check her pants” to ensure that Lucia was anatomically correct. As long as it would get the match made, Rijker repeatedly agreed to relent to Martin’s absurd demand that she undergo DNA testing before she would sign her name opposite Lucia’s on a contract.

It made no difference. The WIBF offered an even split of a $1.5 million purse. Rijker had her pen clicked open, eagerly poised to sign on. Christy felt the offer was beneath her. Lucia opened the door to a winner-take-all option. Martin slammed it in her face. And on it went like this. Earth dutifully turned on its axis while Rijker and Martin pointlessly spun around one another in oppositional gravitation.

While Christy soldiered on, collecting her second loss in the process (to Sumya Anani…more on that later), Lucia Rijker vanished from the boxing scene following her third-round TKO of Diana Dutra in August 1999, despite being contractually obligated to face Denise Moraetes in December. Her sudden disappearance fueled much speculative gossip, the more outlandish claims being that Rijker had contracted Hepatitis or HIV.

It should go without saying that these rumors diverged wildly from the multi-faceted reality of the situation. In addition to needing time for her eardrum to mend (which had been burst by Dutra during their fight), Lucia returned to Amsterdam to be at the bedside of her father who was suffering from terminal stomach cancer. This, coupled with the futility of chasing Christy Martin and the mortification of being discarded by Top Rank’s ringmaster and carnival barker Bob Arum, who was busy peddling Mia St. John and Eric ‘Butterbean’ Esch as sideshow attractions, caused Rijker to develop severe ulcers which required medical treatment.

When she was well enough to do so, Lucia made the rounds of the film festival circuit with director Katya Bankowsky to help promote her fantastic documentary Shadow Boxers which wove the story of the first female New York Golden Gloves competitors in 1995 through the conjoined narrative of Rijker’s ascendance. It was during her travels that Lucia met Hilary Swank, who talked to Rijker about her upcoming involvement in Clint Eastwood’s latest project, an adaptation of a novella from a book called Rope Burns written by boxing trainer Jerry Boyd whose pen name was FX Toole.

Martin was three days away from having to transact business with one tough customer in 17-3-1 Belinda Laracuente (a fight, incidentally, everyone but Martin believes she really lost) on the same lineup as Felix Trinidad’s challenge for David Reid’s WBA super-welterweight title when Lucia resurfaced. Reid was in the midst of conducting a public workout while Martin was being interviewed by a Los Angeles news crew. Enter Lucia Rijker. How the situation escalated is a case of she said/she said.

Christy maintained that Rijker sidled up and whispered something into her ear, which she was certainly close enough to have done, though Lucia denied it. What undoubtedly did transpire was that Martin shoved Rijker who hit Christy with a left cross, the only punch ever to be thrown between the two, it would turn out. Lucia found herself pinned to the ground by a male member of Martin’s entourage who held a tight grip around Rijker’s throat while Christy unloosed a profanity-laced tirade which would have made Mike Tyson proud.

Before being ejected, Lucia expressed how sorry she was to Don King who told her, “No you’re not. You wanted this.” She had to admit he was right. However, Rijker was more contrite in hindsight when speaking to novelist and journalist Katherine Dunn. “I regret lowering myself to her level because it’s not my style. The fighter in me got challenged.”

Martin, meanwhile, bemoaned being sucker-punched by someone she alleged had been running from her for years and feels the need to fight a man yet pulls out of fights with other females due to what Christy scoffed was “some Buddhist bullshit.”

 

Fists of Fury, Peace of Mind

It would be understandable to jump to the conclusion that boxing and Buddhism occupy mutually exclusive domains and that, to lift a line from Rudyard Kipling, “never the twain shall meet.” But not so fast. There is, believe it or not, a fairly wide expanse of philosophical middle ground overlapping the two realms.

Let’s begin with the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths which is the acknowledgement that “life is suffering,” albeit not in the dismal, self-defeating sense in which it might be misinterpreted at first glance. Rather, it is intended as an affirmative recognition of impermanence, the constant state of change or flux.

The first Truth of the Noble Ones is something of a signpost pointing the way to the myriad discoveries contained within the remaining three truths—the Origin of Suffering, the Cessation of Suffering, and the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering. Wisdom, Morality, and Concentration are the three elements that comprise the steps to be taken along the eight-fold path leading away from the sources of our suffering while endeavoring toward consciousness, happiness, compassion, and enlightenment.

The Buddhist and the boxer both strive to achieve and maintain clarity of mind and command of body despite disruptive outside influences as well as one’s own inner fears or perceived defects. “To me, boxing’s about focus, self-control and discipline,” Lucia Rijker has said. “You can sabotage yourself or you can motivate yourself.”

Rijker has long incorporated into her daily routine the ritual chanting of “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” which is specific to the Soka Gakkai school of Buddhism, based on the teachings of the 13th century Japanese monk Nichiren. It translates literally from Sanskrit as “to devote oneself to the mystic law of the lotus sutra” and celebrates the blossoming of the lotus that simultaneously flowers and gives fruit from the muddy water in which it grows, symbolizing the self-empowering concept that the Buddha exists in each of us, waiting to be awakened. The cause and effect of dignity. Beauty spawned from filth. Sure sounds like boxing to me.

“I used to want to kill my opponent. I could care less, I just wanted to beat you and knock you out,” Rijker contemplated in 2014. “And, when I became a Buddhist, I thought that I need you to bring out my potential. So, with all the respect that stepped between the ropes, I wanted to show my fullest potential and that’s why I love the sport so much.”

Lucia joined the broadcast team of Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant, and George Foreman to offer her comments on the first four rounds of Christy Martin’s 2001 Madison Square Garden tussle with Kathy Collins. She credited Collins for taking the fight (which would be Kathy’s last) and paid due respect to Martin’s punching power and expert pacing.

Asked by Lampley, Rijker advocated for three-minute rounds in women’s boxing and pointed out to a sheepish but appreciative Big George that, while sustaining a strike to the chest area definitely knocked you off-balance, a blow directly to the breast did not affect her one way or the other. Lucia also gave her version of events relevant to her melee with Martin, conceding that “I probably shouldn’t have been there.”

On February 16, 2002-after a nearly two and a half year layoff-Rijker returned to the prize ring with a fourth-round TKO of Carla Witherspoon, but it would be an additional sixteen months before she would once again step inside the ropes and outpoint Jane Couch, who made history in 1998 as the first woman to be granted a license by the British Boxing Board of Control. Lucia did find time in between those two bouts to attend Christy Martin and Mia St. John’s ‘Battle of the Cover Girls’ and extend yet another open challenge to the victorious Martin, one which would also go unanswered as Christy opted instead to get destroyed by the bigger, stronger Laila Ali in an August 2003 catch-weight fight.

Rijker regretted that women’s boxing had become a hot topic for all the wrong reasons, subject to ridicule due to what she called “Tits and Ass and those daughters of old legends.” These were, of course, thinly-veiled references to Mia St. John, Laila Ali, and Jacqui Frazier-Lyde. The female offspring of both Muhammad and Smokin’ Joe followed in the footsteps of Archie Moore’s little girl J’ Marie, who debuted in 1997 and fought only once more in 2000 (both wins), and paved the way for Irichele Duran, Freeda Foreman, and Maria Johansson as well.

Creatively billed as Ali/Frazier IV, a sort of sequel to the ‘Thrilla in Manila,’ Jacqui and Laila met at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, New York, which is one exit east off the NYS Thruway from Canastota where the 2001 International Boxing Hall of Fame inductions were being held that weekend. Marvis Frazier walked his sister into the ring and worked her corner while papa Joe watched from ringside. Muhammad Ali, however, was halfway across the country putting in a personal appearance at a NASCAR race in Michigan and, therefore, did not get to personally witness his baby girl continue the family’s win streak against the Fraziers.

 

Million Dollar Baby

Her chance encounter with Hilary Swank turned out to be a fortuitous one and Lucia Rijker, having previously put in a cameo appearance in the 2002 remake of Rollerball, would not only play the part of Billie ‘The Blue Bear’ Osterman, the brutish opponent for Maggie Fitzgerald’s fateful contest in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, but was tasked with choreographing all of the movie’s fight scenes.

The huge box office success and nearly unanimous critical acclaim of the film—not to mention its four major Academy Award wins for Best Picture, Director, Actress, and Supporting Actor—helped bring women’s boxing into public conversation, regardless of how uneasy some felt about the controversial and pivotal plot-point of assisted suicide.

All of this at long last brought about the formal agreement between the various interested parties to the better-late-than-never female mega-bout between Rijker and Martin. Despite the fact that the ‘Million Dollar Lady’ tagline is attributed to Bob Arum, the sovereign of Top Rank instead credited Emanuel Steward who had been training Lucia Rijker of late. However the brainstorming of the promotional aspect played out, it was Arum who bankrolled the supplemental $750,000 which would be awarded to the winner in addition to the guaranteed $250,000 for both Martin and Rijker, hence the million dollar prize.

The public relations train left the station, hurtling full-steam ahead toward its final destination of Las Vegas, Nevada and its 12,000-seat Mandalay Bay Events Center which was booked for July 30, 2005. Time not spent behind podiums at press conferences or on various couches during late night talk shows was dedicated to the gym. Which is where a great deal of pugilistic dreams begin but, as Lucia Rijker would learn the literally painful truth of, some end.

During a sparring session ten days out from fight night, Lucia stepped into an exposed seam in the canvas, rolled her ankle, heard an audible pop, and collapsed in agony. An MRI confirmed everyone’s worst suspicion, a torn Achilles tendon putting the fight with Martin on indefinite delay.

In the wake of the letdown, many pondered the wisdom of rescheduling a too-little, too-late event for which advance ticket sales and pay-per-view pre-orders were undeniably lackluster. It was reported in the July 21 edition of the Los Angeles Times that a mere 2,000 seats had been sold with walk-up ticket sales hoped to boost that figure to around 6,000 which would only reach half-capacity.

Emanuel Steward hypothesized that Rijker could be ready to go again by December, but this wound up being wishful thinking as her cast had, by then, only recently been removed, further delaying Rijker’s recovery and rehabilitation.

Unable to corner either Martin or Laila Ali and troubled by the death of her mother, Lucia would never fight again. Her pro boxing record was frozen in the record books at a perfect 17-0 with 14 knockouts. Meanwhile, Christy Martin traveled to New Mexico where ‘The Coalminer’s Daughter’ would tangle with ‘The Preacher’s Daughter,’ 10-1-2 Holly Holm, an intriguing face-off between the ‘Divas of the Desert’ as it was billed by Fresquez Productions. There was no debate about Holm’s supremacy over Martin in a unanimous decision win, and it became obvious that a new era was dawning in women’s boxing.

“The fight with Lucia Rijker not happening took a big part of my desire and motivation away,” Christy confessed. “I trained so hard for it and was so prepared mentally and physically. It kind of broke me.”

 

Paying Full Fare on the Money Train

Rijker put forth the opinion that a historic throwdown with Christy Martin would have been the equivalent to Ali vs. Frazier. Needless to say, she wasn’t talking about Laila and Jacqui. Plausible as it is that this fight could have and should have launched women’s boxing into a higher stratosphere, it is just as likely that the rivalry between Christy and Lucia, which unfortunately turned out to be cat and mouse rather than seek and destroy, was detrimental to the sport in the sense that other worthy adversaries were left wanting for their shot at high-profile validity and a lucrative payday.

‘The Island Girl’ Sumya Anani, for one, made well-known her feelings regarding her career being a collateral-damage sort of casualty of the million dollar ladies’ war of words. “I beat Christy Martin six years ago and Rijker is still making this big stink about wanting to fight Martin and I don’t understand that,” Sumya told Doghouse Boxing in 2004. “I understand from the marketing and money aspects, but to me the sport is about trying to be the best and fighting the best.”

An eventual four-time world champion in three weight classes, Anani, 11-0 at the time, had pounded out a majority decision over Martin in a December 1998 slugfest, dealing Christy her second loss in 40 fights. Rather than being featured on a Don King-promoted Tyson or Trinidad pay-per-view event at the MGM Grand as originally intended, Anani’s victory over Martin was instead televised on a local basic cable channel from the Fort Lauderdale Memorial Auditorium after Christy had balked on their first contract.

Lucia Rijker remarked in a 2006 interview with Bernie McCoy of the Femm Fan website that Anani “reminds me of Marciano...the way she throws punches from all angles and keeps coming forward.” For these reasons and more, Anani feels as though she was summarily and purposefully left on the outside looking in.

“I know she’s ducking me,” she stated defiantly of Rijker, adding that “she doesn’t have a legitimate belt in any division” and “chooses not to respond to a public challenge.” As to her repeatedly futile attempts to organize a rematch against Martin, Sumya said, “I beat her up and I beat her in her prime, and I think that is hard for her to accept that loss. Some people are not sportsmen when it comes to losing.”

While laughing that, “I appropriately changed her nickname from The Coalminer’s Daughter to The Gold Digger’s Daughter,” Anani had to resign herself to the grim reality that “everybody is going after these money trains.”

 

Turning Lemons Into Pink Lemonade

It should come as no surprise that both Lucia Rijker and Christy Martin were honored among the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame’s inaugural Class of 2014 alongside Barbara Buttrick, Bonnie Canino, JoAnn Hagen, Christy Halbert, and Regina Halmich. Christy, a familiar and welcome face in Canastota at the International Boxing Hall of Fame’s annual induction weekend festivities who is always more than happy to mingle with her fans and never known to refuse an autograph or photo request, came terrifyingly close to being enshrined posthumously.

On the evening of November 23, 2010, Martin informed her husband Jim that she wanted out of their marriage so that she could pursue a full-fledged relationship with her longtime lover, Sherry Jo Lusk. This announcement prompted a savage beating by the man who Christy later confessed she loved but was never in love with. Not only was Jim fully aware of Christy’s bisexuality, he had threatened to go public with the revelation but for the fact that any detrimental effects to her livelihood would have kept the cash from flowing into his own pockets as a result. He had made repeated threats to Christy from the very outset that he would kill her if she ever left him.  

After stabbing Christy numerous times, nearly slashing her leg to the bone with the 9-inch blade during her escape attempt, he then shot his wife in the back with her own 9mm pistol—which, like her trunks and robes and hand wraps, was colored pink—and proceeded to smash her head into a chest of drawers. Left for dead, the self-preservation instincts of a true warrior kicked in and Christy crawled out of the house, fearful that Jim would follow to finish her off. Before that could happen, she was conveyed to a local hospital by a good Samaritan and lived to see another day, which she acknowledged in her Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame induction speech by thanking Sherry for being her reason to keep fighting.

With Jim serving a 25-year sentence for attempted murder but preferring to keep the married name by which she was so well known, Martin quickly embarked upon two comebacks in search of her 50th career victory. She was denied each time, due in large part to a broken hand and bad stoppage against Dakota Stone and a stroke suffered prior to taking an ill-advised rematch with Mia St. John.

Much more importantly, she is a survivor who is still here to tell her tale. Now happily married to Lisa Holewyne, a fellow former prizefighter whom Martin had fought and defeated in 2001, Christy lives in North Carolina where she runs her own promotional company. Her turbulent life story was the subject of the 2021 Netflix documentary Untold: Deal With the Devil, and she has co-written her autobiography with longtime Boston Globe and Boston Herald journalist Ron Borges. Titled Fighting For Survival, the book is scheduled for release on June 8.

Bitten by the acting bug, Lucia Rijker enjoyed a recurring role as an inmate on The L Word and earned some serious nerd cred by playing a bit part as a Romulan communications officer in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot. Lucia has dedicated herself to several fulfilling philanthropic endeavors, as a globetrotting lecturer and inspirational life coach, specializing in empowerment training for both body and mind, women and men. Australian super-featherweight Diana Prazak benefitted directly from Rijker’s selfless guidance, having won WIBA and WBC world titles with Lucia working her corner.

The belligerent animosity that festered between Rijker and Martin has, in Rijker’s case anyway, eroded over time, the hatchet buried and poison arrows kept in their quiver. This can be evidenced in the remarks made by Lucia during her entrance into the Women’s Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale.

“Thank you Christy Martin. You were my drive. I needed a focus point. I wanted to fight you, I wanted to beat you,” said Rijker. “God prevented me, he took out my Achilles tendon right before the big fight that could have helped put women’s boxing on the map. I’m sorry about what happened to you, between you and your husband. May God bless his soul and God bless you.”

Empathy and tolerance and forgiveness rather than sticks and stones and broken bones. A healing touch administered by calloused hands. The lotus blooms and suffering begets rebirth. Only, not as far as Martin is concerned.

Christy was giving a ringside lecture on a rainy Saturday morning of the 2016 International Boxing Hall of Fame induction weekend. I requested the microphone during the Q+A session that followed to inquire as to her disappointment that the fight with Lucia Rijker never took place and whether the disdain between the two was genuine or mostly ballyhoo. I have to admit, I was a little taken aback by the forthrightness of Christy’s candid response.

“Oh no, I hate her,” Martin answered unequivocally. “I hated her then, and I’ll always hate her.” She proceeded to call Rijker a “fraud” and double down on the oft-repeated allegation that Lucia had faked her injury to get out of the fight.  

This deep-seeded animosity could make things especially interesting at this summer’s already momentous IBHOF induction weekend, with the Covid pandemic having postponed the last two ceremonies. As esteemed members of the Class of 2020, Martin and Rijker shared with pioneer Barbara Buttrick the honor of being the first female boxers chosen to be enshrined in Canastota’s hallowed halls. Both Lucia and Christy will presumably be present to receive their gold rings and give their speeches that Sunday afternoon.

Whether they will congratulate, or even acknowledge one another, remains to be seen for the next three months. While a literal embrace is highly improbable, I still like to think that it is somewhere within the realm of possibility that Christy Martin can find it inside herself to come to a place of acceptance for Lucia Rijker.

Not merely as mutual hall of famers two times over, but as fellow human beings who can surely appreciate the fact that life is far too short and much too precious to continue to bear the unnecessary burden of carrying a grudge.  

 

 

Sources:

Brendan Bernhard. Looking For a Fight (LA Weekly, September 18-24, 1998)

Curve Staff. Fighting Words: Lucia Rijker (Curve Magazine, February 9, 2008)

Tris Dixon. Boxing Life Stories #29 Christy Martin (March 31, 2021)

Katherine Dunn. Lucia Rijker—War With Christy Martin –War Rumors and More Rumors (Cyber Boxing Zone, March 3, 2000)

Richard Hoffer. The Lady Is a Champ (Sports Illustrated, April 15, 1996)

Paul Zanon. Safe Place: Christy Martin Looks Back on Her Tumultuous Career, Life (Hannibal Boxing Media, August 4, 2019)  

Shadow Boxers (Image Entertainment documentary directed by Katya Bankowsky, 1999)

Untold: Deal With the Devil (Netflix documentary directed by Laura Brownson, 2021)

WBAN: Sumya Anani, Christy Martin, and Lucia Rijker Profiles

No Doubt About It, Kim Maybee Made Boxing History in the 1970s

In a few days’ time, Kim Maybee would be making her professional boxing debut. More than that, she would be making history as a participant in the first ever female fight in California. If she was at all nervous, the casual demeanor of this gregarious eighteen-year-old Cal State freshman in a back office of the Main Street Gym betrayed no hint of it whatsoever.

Maybee, a vegetarian and big believer in herbal remedies, chewed on a piece of ginseng root while lounging around on a couch. As sportswriters and photographers hastily came and went throughout the course of this media event orchestrated by promoter Don Fraser, Kim plucked away at a kalimba—a wooden African instrument sometimes referred to as a “thumb piano”—as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “Hey, I’ve fought so many times since I was a little kid, it’s ridiculous,” Maybee remarked nonchalantly.   

And this momentous fight was not taking place at some obscure little athletic club, mind you. Her 1976 bout against Pat Pineda was featured on the undercard of a show being headlined by Danny ‘Little Red’ Lopez, who at the time was just two fights and a little less than six months away from winning the world featherweight title, at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

Whether or not she was willing to admit it, the fact that the “Fabulous Forum” played host to the Los Angeles Lakers must have been of special significance to Maybee. Standing just shy of six-foot-two, Kim had been a standout on her junior high and high school basketball teams. While training for the April 28 fight mostly in her Hollywood backyard, many mornings she would sneak away to Beverly Hills High School where she would shoot hoops with Marques Johnson and Richard Washington of the UCLA Bruins.

Multi-faceted in her natural athleticism, Kim also had an avid interest in football and, come Autumn, planned to try out for the Los Angeles-based professional female squad called the Dandelions. Boxing was something she gravitated towards almost incidentally.

The youngest of eight siblings, not to mention the only girl among the Maybee brood, Kim was often used as a “punching bag” by her older brothers, all of whom lifted weights, played basketball, and boxed recreationally. Maybee developed a sizable chip on her shoulder at quite an early age and dared her classmates to try and knock it off, provoking them with insults she learned from the “dirty books” she somehow managed to get a hold of. “I’d call them ‘libidinous’ or something,” Kim laughed, “and they’d take a swing at me.”

Every one of these altercations ended in Maybee’s favor, earning her a “big-headed” self-assurance and a reputation to go with her unchecked aggression, referred to as “queen of the school” in junior high by her intimidated or just plain terrified peers. “People were patting me on the back, buying me lunch,” she boasted. “I would step in front of the lunch line in the cafeteria and people would move. Everybody was at my feet.”  

They always say to pick on someone your own size and, sure enough, Kim’s superiority was put to the test one day when she was challenged to a fight by a girl as big and broad as she was. After school, they faced off in the parking lot of a local gas station. Despite admitting to being “scared to death,” Maybee let the other girl throw the first punch. Kim easily ducked beneath the errant swing and hit the girl in the stomach. With the wind knocked out of her adversary, Kim proceeded to grab her by the hair. Bending her leg at about a 60-degree angle, she drove the girl’s head face-first into her knee. Just like that, the fight was over. Not that it turned out to be much of a fight after all. “Man, I love to break the nose and jam it into the brain,” Kim exclaimed. “That’s the sure-fire way.”

In an effort to steer Kim onto a path she felt was more suitable for a proper young lady, Maybee’s grandmother enrolled her in modeling school. As you might imagine, this didn’t sit well with the fast-talking, fist-swinging teenager who already had her mind made up to pursue athletic endeavors. “My grandmother said if I wasn’t careful, people would say I was gay. But I’m a different person about sports.” Maybee declared in no uncertain terms. “Man, it’s about the sport. Not about being feminine or masculine, but being about the sport.”

Not that you would know it judging by the calm, cool composure with which she carried herself like a seasoned pro who had been there, done that several dozen times over, but all of this attention being lavished upon her by the press was brand new to Kim Maybee. The same was not true of her opponent, whose name and picture had been in the paper on plenty of occasions prior to this.

A twenty-year-old divorced mother of two, Pat Pineda emerged as the star pupil of the boxing gym called the Locker Club run by Dee Knuckles at the San Pedro Harbor View House.

Before we go any further, let’s address Dee’s last name which could easily be mistaken for a self-applied moniker born of a cheap gimmick to drum up publicity. But not so. Knuckles was her honest-to-goodness, legally-binding married name. The matronly nurse turned boxing trainer was fond of saying how she didn’t make the name up, she married into it.

Although the obstinate Pineda constantly locked horns with Knuckles, she moved to the head of the class and became a mentor to many of the young girls who passed through the doors of the roach-infested little gym with rusted-out lockers and a practice ring that had a soiled canvas which seemed to have the springy consistency of a well-worn mattress.

Contained within a home for wayward youths, Dee’s humble establishment seemed to be the primary target for multiple instances of thievery and vandalism, as well as one case of arson. Knuckles believed this to be the handiwork of ne’er-do-wells looking to send a deliberate message that female boxing was unwelcome. Because the Harbor View House was located in a particularly rough area of San Pedro, the local cops were dismissive of her theory.

Taking all of these factors under consideration, Dee Knuckles had received nationwide media coverage and would parlay her recognition into helping Pineda make a successful bid to become the first woman to obtain a California State boxing license in January 1976. “My ring name is Liberation,” stated Pineda after getting the green light from the State Athletic Commission.     

While she waited for an opportunity to fight in her home state, Pineda took her first bout at the Sahara Hotel on Lake Tahoe in Nevada on March 18. It was reported that Pineda’s take home pay was a measly $50 for dropping a four-round decision to Theresa Kibby, otherwise known by her Indigenous name ‘Princess Red Star.’ She admitted to being “petrified in the ring” but also angered by the Native American war cries emanating from the audience in support of Kibby, due to Pat’s being “part Spanish and part Indian.”

Shortly afterwards, Kim Maybee would be granted her license by the CSAC and become the “suitable opponent” the press were openly dubious would materialize to square off against Pat Pineda. Predictably, before the first punch was even thrown at the Forum, the first women’s bout in the state’s history was ridiculed by some as a “carnival.” Others, while less harsh in their criticism, were still skeptical.

”Maybee and Pineda are hesitant,” opined commission inspector George Johnson. “They’re not mean enough.” He had supervised the screening process for both female fighters, in addition to Diane Syverson, a third applicant already well-known as a roller derby girl whom Johnson said could “hit as hard as some men.” However, he maintained that all three had “limited ability.”

Howie Steindler, owner of the Main Street Gym where Maybee and Pineda conducted workouts and interviews prior to their fight, appeared unimpressed with their coordination. “Girls paw at each other,” he scoffed.

“We have to start somewhere. We can’t expect the same degree of proficiency as men at this stage of the game,” said CSAC executive officer Robert Turley. “But we don’t want this to become a sideshow act. We want a certain amount of dignity.” Turley confessed to having grave doubts about allowing the women to box until his thought process evolved after seeking the counsel of Althea Gibson.

The former professional golfer and tennis player who had been the first black woman to compete at Wimbledon and win the U.S. Open, was then serving as the New Jersey State Athletic Commissioner and told Turley about how her father refused to let her walk the streets of Harlem alone until she learned to defend herself. Kim Maybee’s introduction to fighting was very much the same, subjected to tough love at home so that she knew how to protect herself out in the streets. “If they jumped me, I’d jump back at them,” Maybee said of the neighborhood kids itching for a fight. “Mom said, ‘You get whipped and come home and you get whipped again.’”

“Maybe it isn’t unnatural today for girls to fight. Maybe it isn’t unladylike,” Turley reflected after his conversation with Gibson. “Girls fight. Boys fight. They fight each other. I guess our attitudes were established over the years.”

Kim Maybee had her priorities straight, that’s for sure. “You know, some girls just want to go out with a lot of guys and make a name sitting behind a typewriter,” professed Kim. “They don’t do nothing, and that’s not for me.” Maybee did admit that she considered pugilism more a means to an end rather than a passion. “It’s not that I like boxing,” she said. “But it’s something that’s there. I saw Pat on TV once and I wanted to fight her. I didn’t know she was so little, though. She looks like she comes to my kneecaps. I’ll be reaching down and she’ll be reaching up. It’s going to be weird!”

Indeed, Pineda, at five-foot-three, was just about eleven inches shorter than the supremely confident Maybee who, stretched out on the couch at the Main Street Gym, bragged to reporters about her rock-hard abs as she took out a fresh piece of ginseng to casually pop into her mouth as others might a stick of bubble gum. “It purifies the blood, man,” Kim explained. “I’m gonna be ready for this fight.”

Asked if she was concerned about her lack of boxing experience relative to that of her opponent, Maybee replied, “Pat can hit me all she wants, but I will not fall. One thing I worry about is Pat’s face. She is pretty. Wow! If I hit her—I’ve seen the aftereffects of hitting someone in the jaw,” she cautioned. “I figure one round. That’s all I need.” As it would turn out, Kim’s prediction wasn’t too far off.

Maybee did have some anxious moments at the weigh-in, however, when she nearly had to forfeit her spot on the card to Diane Syverson by coming in twelve pounds over the agreed-upon limit. She was able to sweat off five pounds in a steam room to get down to 160 while Pineda attempted to make up the difference by gorging on Chinese and Mexican food, bulking up to 154. The Commission was satisfied and allowed the matchup to proceed as planned. Syverson would have to wait her turn, though she would again cross paths with Maybee not too far down the road, and next time in a head-on collision. But, first thing’s first.   

With attendance at the Forum estimated at 7,600 spectators, Pineda and Maybee wore 10-ounce gloves and mandatory breast protectors for their history-making fight which was scheduled to go four two-minute rounds with Marty Denkin officiating. This seems to have been only the second bout to which Denkin had been assigned at the time. Upon his retirement in 2015, Denkin had refereed more than 1,500 fights—almost half of which were championship matches—and appeared on the silver screen in the familiar role of third man in the ring for Raging Bull as well as the third and fourth Rocky movies. It would be a short night at the office for Marty on April 28, 1976.

“She couldn’t take no more,” said Maybee after pummeling Pineda into submission inside of two rounds. “I wish I could have got a whole KO, not a technical one,” she lamented. Not at all unlike the schoolyard and gas station scraps Kim had instigated or gotten herself into one way or another, the outcome of her fight with Pineda was never in question.

The size differential between the two was startlingly evident, and perhaps Pineda was a bit sluggish after ingesting so much fatty food in so short a time. In the early moments of the second frame, the lanky southpaw trapped Pineda in a corner where all Pat could hope to do was ward off the barrage of incoming punches. Marty Denkin pulled Kim off a virtually defenseless Pineda and directed her to a neutral corner where Maybee celebrated with her version of the Ali shuffle. After administering a standing-eight count, Denkin issued a query to Pineda regarding whether she wanted to continue or not. Receiving a mere shake of the head by way of response, Marty waved the one-sided affair off with more than a minute remaining on the clock.

Back in the dressing room, sportswriters seemed more interested in finding out if Kim Maybee indulged in appropriately girlish extracurricular activities. “I know how to knit, but it’s a waste of time,” she retorted. “But I can cook. Now,” Kim said before excusing herself, “I want to see my friends.” As for Pineda, she had come to the conclusion after just two bouts that professional boxing was not the life for her. “That was my last fight,” she commented humbly, off to pursue a marriage to the Merchant Marine she had been dating against Dee Knuckles’ wishes.

The purse money paid to both women varies depending on which account you read. Some say they each received $250, while others reported that Pineda got as much as $400 as opposed to $350 for Maybee. Public opinion on the fight itself was mixed at best, largely uncomplimentary. At least among the male contingency.

A writeup of the bout by Omer Crane of the Fresno Bee was titled “Fight Game Bottoms Out.” A Santa Monica dentist named Joseph Rosenberg, who was in attendance at the Forum, asked, “Is this sick, or is this sick?” He answered his own question by affirming, “It’s insanely sadistic to watch two women fight.” These sentiments were shared by Georgie Jerome, a grizzled and hardened trainer who said, “Anyone who puts a woman in the ring ought to be put in jail. Women aren’t built for fighting. It’s inhuman.” 

A former boxer identified as ‘Jolting’ Johnny Smith griped, “When we went in there it was kill or be killed. Those girls were dragging it. You can’t change the rules for them. They sell fights here, and it’s a fraud if they don’t produce what they promise. Make ‘em fight proper. Let ‘em get in there and kill each other.”

Former fighter and veteran trainer Jimmy Fujimoto expressed a backhandedly appreciative viewpoint. “Hell, it’s alright with me,” he said. “They fight in bars and streets, don’t they? In my opinion it’s okay.” Stan Shioi, a fellow longtime trainer, concurred with Fujimoto. “I think it’s good. You can’t deny women the right to perform, can you?” he ventured, albeit with a caveat of sorts. “You’ve got to have gimmicks to make money, to bring in the customers.” 

“It was a terrible fight,” grumbled Don Fraser, the event’s promoter, when the topic of the Maybee/Pineda fight was brought up a few months before his 2005 induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. “It wasn’t one of my shining moments.”  

Dee Knuckles, who signed Maybee shortly after the bout at the Forum, said, “I think women’s fighting is really going to climb. Many, like Kim, learned to fight in the street. And it’s all business—they diet, do roadwork, and throw real punches—just like men.” She was of the opinion that “Kim’s the best throughout the states right now.”

Wasting little time in between, Knuckles scheduled another unprecedented fight for Maybee, this one against Margie ‘KO’ Dunson on May 12 in Honolulu, the first female bout to ever take place in Hawaii. Hailing from Portland, Maine, Dunson had gone down to defeat in her two previous fights that year—suffering a TKO loss to Lady Tyger Trimiar in her February pro debut, then dropping a unanimous decision to Gwen Gemini on April 16.

Maybee required only an extra thirty seconds or so than she did against Pineda to dispatch Dunson, and Kim would have no regrets afterwards as to the decisive nature of this knockout. Dunson did little more from the outset than employ a peek-a-boo stance in a purely defensive struggle for survival while Maybee boxed circles around her, laughing all the while. Kim deposited Dunson onto the canvas with a right hook in the second round which put her clearly overmatched opponent down for the count at the 1:36 mark.

“I thought Maybee was a pretty good fighter,” said Hawaii State Boxing Commission executive secretary Bobby Lee, who had personally approved the bout. “But Dunson couldn’t fight a lick. I thought she got hit pretty good, but I thought she could have gotten up if she wanted to.” Overall, Lee had a dim view of women’s ability to compete as prizefighters. “You can call me a male chauvinist pig if you want to,” he insisted, “but girls just aren’t built to be boxers.”

Another first was soon in store for Maybee. The city of Fresno would host its inaugural women’s boxing match on June 12 at the Wilson Theater with Kim Maybee taking on Diane Syverson. Since trading in her roller derby skates for a pair of boxing gloves earlier in the year, Syverson had dueled to a draw with Theresa Kibby in her pro debut that May and was awarded a split decision victory in their rematch. Diane’s pair of fights against Lady Tyger Trimiar at the Olympic Auditorium, which Syverson split with the trailblazer and future hall of famer, was still a few months away.

This was a tough matchup stylistically for Maybee, who was frustrated to the point of scowling throughout the fight by Syverson’s stick-and-move brand of aggression. Kim was also bothered by the repeated rabbit punches thrown by Syverson as well as referee Hank Elespuru’s seeming reluctance to take any action against Diane for these infractions. “I told you to tell her to watch it!” Maybee could be heard screaming at Elespuru. 

A wardrobe malfunction midway through the third round was a clear indication that this just wasn’t Maybee’s night. Her breast protector popped loose and needed to be dealt with. Promoter Sammy Sanders, who worked Kim’s corner for the fight, was tasked with taping it back into place. Sammy’s first effort failed to hold and the protector was again readjusted amidst a chorus of hooting, hollering, and catcalling from ringside.

With 40 seconds left in the fourth and final round, an exasperated Maybee turned her back to Syverson and retreated to her corner, refusing to engage any further. Hank Elespuru had no other choice than to initiate a ten-count which Kim ignored, resulting in a “No Mas”-type capitulation four-plus years before the infamous Leonard/Duran incident.

“Boxing won’t pay the bills. The future? I’m not going to say. I don’t know,” mused the victorious Syverson who was giving serious consideration to becoming a policewoman. “I fought the kind of fight I had to tonight. It was more slugging. My other bouts were more boxing—more skill involved.”

Former welterweight world champion Ralph Giordano, who won 122 career bouts between 1919 and 1940 under the name Young Corbett III, was present for the fight at the Wilson Theater. “Yeah, it’s sport, it’s entertaining. But the girls are still developing and they’ll come along,” he theorized with cautious optimism. “I didn’t think it would be any rougher than it was. They’re used to this kind of stuff. I don’t know if it’ll stay around, but I thought they did a pretty good job.” However, he ended by confessing, “No, I wouldn’t go out of my way to see another one—not the kind I saw tonight.”

Things would continue to go downhill from there for Maybee, culminating in an acrimonious split from Dee Knuckles in August. “I signed a four-month contract with Dee Knuckles after my first fight in Los Angeles,” she told the press. “She made a lot of promises. She’s not a good lady.”

A recent trip to Japan booked by Knuckles for Maybee to earn $500 competing in a mixed match against a female professional wrestler (whom Kim knocked out) was not all it was cracked up to be. “Dee told me we would stay in all the best hotels. In Japan, our hotel had cockroaches that were one-and-a-half inches long. And she said she’d pay my tuition at school, and give me an apartment. She has not done any of these things,” grouched Maybee who, at the time, lived platonically in a Hollywood apartment with her trainer Ali Brown.

“Kim’s young,” Knuckles responded offhandedly to Maybee's allegations. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time.”     

The final fight on record in the brief boxing career of Kim Maybee is a four-round points loss to the great Lady Tyger on September 26, 1977 in Stockton, California. What happened to her from there seems to be anybody’s guess.

Wherever Kim Maybee may be (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), I hope that she is alive and well, peaceful and content, yet maintains that same fighting spirit that defined who she was in her youth.

 

Sources:

Cheryl Bensten. California Has Its First Ms. Match (Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1976)

Omer Crane. Fight Game Bottoms Out (Fresno Bee, April 30, 1976)

Anthony Delano. OK—It’s a KO (London Daily Mirror, February 26, 1976)

Jim Easterwood. Boxing Tale of Tape May Take in Curves (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 5, 1976)

Dave Koga. Coed KOs Foe In Hawaii Bout (Pacific Daily News, May 15, 1976)

Robert Lindsey. Women Try Boxing on the Coast (New York Times, May 1, 1976)

Eddie Lopez. Women Will ‘Grace’ Ring (Fresno Bee, June 10, 1976)

Eddie Lopez. Powder-Puffers Please (Fresno Bee, June 13, 1976)

Bob MacDonald. Old Boxing Law Fades Into Past (Escondido Times-Advocate, May 4, 1976)

Ed Meagher. In This Corner…A Woman (Los Angeles Times, January 14, 1976)

Donna Sansoucy. Watch It, Men—The Women Are Ready To Fight (Torrance Daily Breeze, July 14, 1974)

Jack Stevenson. The Lady Has a Punch (Bakersfield Californian, April 29, 1976)

Dee Knuckles Interview (Torrance Daily Breeze, February 29, 1976)

Dee Knuckles, Kim Maybee Split (New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 7, 1976)

Forum Follies, The Asylum (Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1976)

Girls Learn Boxing Techniques (Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1975)

Lady Boxer Not Overly Excited (Abilene Reporter-News, April 27, 1976)

$1 Million Couldn’t Have Saved This Baby (Reno Gazette-Journal, March 1, 2005)