Right to Fight

I had a long,

very fast left jab.

Not so fast these days.

Throw the left hand, and then come-

because they're looking at this one,

and then I would hit them with this one.

They said I had dynamite in both hands.

It never occurred to me

that I was doing something so outrageous.

We were challenging the norm, and that was frightening people.

A woman is not made to be a fighter.

It should not be tolerated.

Nobody in the whole United States wanted women in the ring, period.

Fighters are made to the punched.

Women ain't made to be hit in the breast.

It was unbelievable. They had rules to stop women from boxing.

A woman could never be a boxer,

just by the fact that a woman's role

- is of being a subordinate. - What the fuck, man?

I'm gonna kick some ass, you know, I wanna fuck somebody up.

Bam, bam, bam!

All the rage, the hate, the

you guys are not gonna stop me. This is something I want.

But nobody ever told the story.

The history of women's boxing is an amazing story,

but it has been totally erased.

After I left the sport, I went on the Internet, thinking,

"Well, there's gotta be a lot of things about the pioneer

female boxers," and to my dismay, there's virtually nothing.

We disappeared.

There was Cat Davis,

Lavonne Ludian, Pat Pineda,

Lady Tyger. Women are wonderful and great.

Lady Tyger, champion of the world.

Where are these fighters now? What happened to them?

And why have they been erased from history?

Well, it all started with fencing.

When I saw the '72 Olympics,

I got so inspired.

I decided to be a fencer.

I wanted to be up there

winning an Olympic medal because I was the best.

So, I signed up to a fencing club at Louisiana University.

I turned out to be very gifted at it.

My trainer, he said, "You need to move to New York

to study with Csaba Elthes."

He was the best coach in the world at the time.

But I knew my mom wouldn't approve.

My dad died before I was born,

so I was raised by my mom, and...

when my mother and I interacted,

it was a lot about the old south stuff.

She wanted me to stay a little doll.

I just couldn't do the girl thing.

I just wasn't- I wasn't cut out for it.

My fencing was a big disappointment to her, I think.

But I thought, you know, "Fuck it."

I packed up, headed to New York on a bus,

with 100 bucks in my pocket. I was pumped.

I was very excited to meet Csaba.

I was gonna meet the pope.

Csaba came in, and I asked him if he would teach me sabre.

And he said to me, in a very stern voice,

"Young lady,

I don't teach women or cripples sabre."

And he actually hit me across my leg with his weapon,

and drew blood.

Sliced me up. I was heart-broken.

It was just because I was a woman.

Well, by 1972,

the women's movement had made some progress in the courts.

We will make real the promise of equality for all.

But in the real world, we were still treated as second-class citizens.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in favour of women.

I mean, I think every man should own one.

There have been 73 astronauts in our space programme,

but never any woman.

A real woman don't wanna be equal to a man,

a real man don't want no woman being his equal.

And if she don't like it, put her out, find another one.

I went back to my apartment,

I only had a few dollars left,

but I said to myself, "I am not going back home.

I have to make it work here."

So, I got some newspapers

and I started looking for a job,

and I was going through and circling the ones I was interested in,

and then I came upon this one that says,

'Wanted: woman boxers'.

It sounded like assembly line, boxing up things.

I said, "Ah, that sounds like something I can do."

This guy answered the phone.

We need somebody real bad.

His name was Sal. You're not a fighter, are you?

It turned out it wasn't boxing goods, it was the sport of boxing.

I never heard of women boxing.

I was a little bit taken aback,

you know, this naive southern girl.

He was a larger-than-life Italian-American boxing trainer.

So, we arranged to meet.

When I first saw you walking out the door,

that I thought you were gonna be some kind of an animal.

She opens the door, here comes this good-looking blonde,

and I say, "Oh hell, man, this is our girl."

I thought he was really dumb, because he just sat there

with his mouth open and he wouldn't say anything.

And I started to say, "Did I- Did I say something wrong?"

Finally he shut his mouth, says, "Get in. We're going back to the gym."

The first thing he wanted me to do was hit the bag.

It felt pretty good.

I mean, it works just like fencing.

To be a good fencer, you have to have the head of a chess player,

the arms of an orangutan,

and the footwork of a ballet artist.

So, I had the arms of an orangutan.

Sal said he was gonna make woman's boxing the next big thing.

He got the idea form a woman named Lady Tyger,

after seeing her in the gym and training.

I was born in New York, Harlem.

Growing up in the projects wasn't all bad.

We played jump rope, we played double Dutch.

Used to get into little street fights, little scraps.

When I fought, I would scratch,

and they called it tiger marks,

so I got the name "Tiger".

My father was an alcoholic.

He sometimes would get drunk

and he would lie down in the lobby of the building.

People would actually rob him of the money for our rent,

food, and everything, and it was all gone.

I loved my father, but that made it a little difficult for me.

One day, I came home and I saw

my father watching Muhammad Ali.

He was going through the motions,

as if he was in the ring.

I looked at my father and his enthusiasm,

and I felt that energy myself.

We would actually shadowbox together in the apartment.

I said, "You know what?

I think this is something that I wanna do."

And when I told my father that I was interested in boxing,

he didn't say, "Oh no, that's not for girls."

No, he didn't have that attitude at all.

So, I went looking for somewhere to train.

I went from gym to gym,

but they would laugh at me and say, "This is not a sport for women."

No-one would take me in.

Women's boxing in the early '70s was...

It really was more or less non-existent.

When I started reading boxing magazines,

along with the Charles Atlas ads to get bigger muscles,

were ads for apartment boxing,

and they were selling these eight-millimetre films

of women boxing, sometimes topless,

and that was the extent of women boxing

in the '60s and early '70s.

I was determined to be a boxer,

so I made business cards.

On the card it said I was the first female boxer.

Eventually, a trainer accepted me,

and he brought me into his gym.

It was old-fashioned.

They initiated me with beating me up.

Busted lip, a black eye,

bloody nose.

They were like trophies to me.

The first time I saw Lady Tyger in the gym, I thought,

"That's odd, I hope she has her own dressing room."

There was no bathroom for women.

They had to tell the fellas to get out.

I started to take a shower there.

Then I noticed that they had a peephole.

Oh my goodness.

But I kept coming back.

I started getting better and better.

I eventually earned their respect.

But one day, someone at the gym told me,

"The State Athletic Commission has a rule.

No woman can be licenced as a boxer."

So, legally I can't box.

I said, "What?" I said, "What are you talking about?

And what the hell is a boxing commission?"

100- no. 189...

188 lbs. 188 lbs.

The purpose of a boxing commission is to supervise the sport.

A boxer has to be licenced by the State Athletic Commission.

The manager has to be licenced. Even the announcer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement here.

A boxing licence represents everything,

because without a licence, you can't box professionally.

You wouldn't get paid, so you can't make money.

In those days,

the most powerful boxing commission was New York State.

It was home to Madison Square Garden,

the most famous arena in the world.

It had more famous boxers than any other state,

so it was logical that the headquarters for boxing

should be New York City.

Because New York was the leader, other states followed.

They copied their book.