Fighting Is Not a Metaphor: Women's Boxing (originally posted at Feministe 10/23/06)

Way back when Lubu was a cub, I use’ta look forward to Wide World of Sports:

The thrill of victory!……the agony of defeat!……

My dad would pour me a small glass of beer, saying “Here kid, this’ll put hair on yer chest!” while I’d giggle and get settled in to my spot on the couch to watch boxing matches, if we were lucky. We’d watch Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvelous Marvin Hagler. My dad would point out all the shots to me, like a trainer; critique the fight and give me background history on the fighters. He boxed as a kid, and still enjoys watching the fights; it’s a cinch we’ll still be on the couch together any given weekend there’s a boxing match on, ‘cept now he drinks soda. I liked the fights—still do. It was and is pure competition, one-on-one—no team, no tools, no landscape except for the ropes and canvas. I wanted to grow up to box, too. I wished I lived somewhere where there was a boxing gym, so I could learn to be a fighter.

Mike Tyson, kicking off his World Tour, offered up the possibility of a demonstration match with Ann Wolfe, a fighter women’s heavyweight champion Laila Ali has been assiduously trying to avoid getting in the ring with for years. What went mostly unnoticed in the hype and hiss about Tyson, was the fact that so many folks have never even heard of Ms. Wolfe and her 24 wins (16 of them knockouts) , 1 loss record.

Ann Wolfe is the only fighter in boxing history to hold world titles in four different categories simultaneously. Her story is the stuff of legend—dropping out of school in the sixth grade to support her family, her mother dead of cancer when she was only 18, her father murdered soon after, she did time in prison, was homeless with two children, a survivor of domestic violence (she once tried to get Ali into the ring with the idea that they would both donate their purses to battered womens’ shelters)—Ann Wolfe conquered all of that to rise to her current standing in boxing. No one in the sport, notorious for its hard-luck stories, has worked harder to get where she is now. Yet still, she can’t get a fight purse worthy of her, and covergirl Laila Ali keeps blowing her off—perhaps feeling time is on her side, as Wolfe gets closer to 40.

Ann said, “Ain’t no way in this world.” about the suggested Tyson matchup, but she’s no stranger to the controversy of fighting a man. She was scheduled to fight Bo Skipper before Hurricane Katrina postponed that fight; it was rescheduled, but in the interim period she injured her shoulder in a car accident and underwent surgery. The fight ended up being scrapped, but the reasons for it still remain:

“Here is what I think, I am not going to go by my manager or what anybody else thinks because it is what I think, because at first I didn’t want to fight a male fighter but you know the first time I fought Valerie (Mahfood) I made one dollar, I got one dollar. I fought at least four or five fights for one dollar; I gave my opponent more than half of my purse in order for them to fight because the promoters didn’t want to come up with any more money. The first title I won I was supposed to get three thousand dollars I had to give her two of mine, I ended up with a thousand she ended up with five. Now, the girls now that whenever they step in that ring, win lose or draw or what ever it is they know I am going to do something to them. Not all but most want more money, they want twenty-five thousand, fifty thousand and one hundred thousand, and they want me to do what I have been doing. Do you know that I am a junior middleweight, I am a natural junior middleweight and I am fighting girls at one hundred and seventy, one hundred and eighty, girls like Vonda Ward. I have to give up all the money in order for the girls to fight me and all the weight, we are talking about twenty pounds of weight, no matter how big I get or what I look like I am a junior middleweight. I have given up the weight and the money. It is so difficult to get opponents it is pitiful, what am I supposed to do, retire?”

Interviewer Benny Henderson pushed her harder on how fighting a man was going to get her anywhere in her sport, but she pushed back:

“How does it help out? You might not want me to say how it helps out. Where were they when I was getting a dollar a fight, why weren’t they asking that question, let’s pay Ann more than a damn dollar. I am training all the time and missing out on so much with my kid’s school, all I do is train. None of the girls in this sport or the boxing commission is worried about my best interest. They were going to allow two girls to fight for a million dollars, but I am supposed to fight for a dollar and that is justified?”

It’s a familiar story in women’s boxing, one in which women had to continually fight for the right to fight. The stories of women boxers still aren’t commonly known; every schoolgirl has heard of Billie Jean King, but how many know of Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar, who went on hunger strike in 1987 for better money, conditions, and more recognition and opportunity for professional female fighters? or of Sue “Tiger Lilly” Fox, creator of the Women’s Boxing Archive Network?

I’m still a fight fan. Boxing in general doesn’t get much play in the sports pages anymore, and women’s boxing even less. Ann Wolfe is one of the more successful women in boxing, yet if you visit her website and look around, it won’t take you long to figure out just how much of a hand-to-mouth operation her gym is. Headlines splash with the misadventures of sports heros, but this heroine who gives what little she has back to her community, gets little attention. Women’s magazines—even women’s sports magazines, aren’t putting her face on the cover. Her impeccable fight record hasn’t resulted in any lucrative endorsement contracts. She hasn’t been asked to model clothing, makeup or shoes. But she’s still out there, keeping on keeping on, in the tradition of boxing’s foremothers. I would have thought that things would have changed; that there would be room for women boxers since back in the day when I first asked my dad where they were, why I couldn’t grow up to box, too. Maybe someday.