Steve Bunce BOXING
When Cindy Zamudio torched the toilets at her high school in Los Angeles she had no idea she was on her way to the boxing ring. She was ready for a career in prison.
Zamudio is 18 years old and 121kg. She is the super-heavyweight amateur champion of the United States and is currently in her third year of a jeopardy programme within the Cali-fornia school system under which she must continue to box as a condition of her rehabilitation. Not surprisingly, she loves to fight.
At the third Everlast US Amateur championships in Midland, Texas, in April almost 200 of the 3E000 female amateur boxers in America arrived in the West Texas oil town hoping for a title. Zamudio was not the heaviest fighter to step on the scales, placed behind a sheet to protect the boxers’ modesty.
The big girl in Midland was known as the “Grim Woman”. Debbie Grim lives in New York, sings for a living and on several occasions has been arrested for fighting men in bars. The 29-year-old weighed in at 128,5kg in her ample sports bra.
“I have always had a lot of aggression,” explained Grim in her soft and friendly voice. “I started to box and I knew it was helping me calm down.”
Zamudio was less articulate but recognised that boxing had stopped her doing “stupid stuff”. In Midland she listened to the whispers as people joked about her fat, her speed and her face. She was desperate for revenge by the time the first bell sounded on semifinals night.
In the opposite corner was Grim and she was nervous, an emotional wreck when the referee stepped forward to check her gloves, gumshield and headguard. She had no idea what he was saying and her cornerman, Nick, apologised for her state.
Grim’s shoulders rose to jerky heights as she waited for the bell and her first amateur contest. She looked breathless and pale.
Zamudio looked calm and dangerous in the seconds before the contests started. She had been in the ring before and stopped all her opponents. She was moving from boot to boot with her small eyes fixed on Grim.
They were just two women with a combined weight of 250kg waiting to go out and fight for four rounds of two minutes. There was nothing at stake but a place in the final.
It was all over 83 seconds later. “It’s shit in all their faces,” screeched Zamudio. “They said I was too fat, they said I was too slow and that’s all I needed.” Grim was rescued on her feet in a bewildered and unsteady heap after climbing up from a knockdown.
“Did you laugh?” asked Grim. “I was too embarrassed; I just wanted to vanish when it was over.” A few weeks later Grim returned to boxing and won the New York Golden Gloves at Madison Square Garden, but on that hot Texas night her blasted eyes were a savage reminder of just how brutal boxing can be. Three days later Zamudio won the title. She was still angry but she had some revenge.
Welcome to the real world of women’s boxing, not the freak show that the professional game has become as each month more nudes, porn stars and famous daughters undo a decade’s good work by the pioneers of the paid business.
In Midland the ordinary women of the US’s fighting culture fought for the 13 titles on offer and a chance to represent their county in European competitions.
If any played a role in a porn film or posed naked it was to supplement the income from their main jobs in restaurants, the marines or serving beer in Hell’s Kitchen bars. There was no one here to rival Jacqui Frazier-Lyde or Laila Ali in the famous-father stakes, but some said their dads were notorious.
They gathered in the oil town and left behind their jobs, their kids, their husbands and their wives. Some came with their kids and spouses to create the oddest of sporting environments. Zamudio had her mother at her side and several had their fathers in their corner. The dozen or so lesbian couples, including a New York undercover vice cop and her new wife, just added to the carnival of strangeness. The officials from USA Amateur Boxing treated the whole event with a light but serious touch that is sadly missing from any other sport where gays and straights compete. Female amateur boxing is one sport where the idea that a bad slapper is better than a brilliant dyke is just not true. Boxing has always had a beautiful way of telling society to get stuffed.
When Amber Gideon arrived in West Texas with her children Dante and Devon she had no idea how long she would be away from Chicago. The drive had taken 24 hours and she soon discovered that she had to box four times to win at lightweight. She had the kids because there was nobody else to look after them – but no coach.
Seven days and four wins later she was the champion and back in the van driving more than 2E000km to Chicago to save her job at a kindergarten by Monday morning. “This is the first time my boys have seen me box,” Gideon said. “They have lost interest as the days have passed.” They slept through the final.
“I have explained to them that this is something I do for myself. It gets me out of the house and I see no reason why I can’t be a lover and a fighter; a mummy,” she said. Her final was described on ESPN when it was shown as “a war”. Recent men in her life have been swiftly exchanged for the boxing ring at the first sign of their resistance to her chosen sport. There were no soppy women in Midland and none that felt the need to try and shock like Fleetwood’s Jane Couch.
It is not just the men or women in the lives of the fighters that can cause problems. Julia Day left Lexington, Kentucky, in search of a title and never told her parents. They have never liked her fighting, never understood her desire to win in the ring. She won twice to reach the final. Her coach, Gerald Reed, himself a professional boxer, had taught her the old styles in the old way and she moved like a seasoned professional from the Fifties or Sixties.
“She has the balance because we stood on paint cans,” said Reed. “The problem with women is nobody takes them seriously.” He sounded at times like Mickey trying to convert Rocky Balboa from bum to champion. Reed had reservations at first. “Here comes a pretty,” he thought. She stuck with it, stuck with him and her parents moved further away from her life. Day is only 20 now.
“I just want to be able to go home and tell them, ‘I did it, I finally did something on my own.’ That is my dream,” said Day, who works in a gym back in Lexington. On the day of the finals she was unapproachable. On the night she was silent, never taking her eyes off the ring during her 20-minute warm-up.
Reed was nervous. Day’s opponent, Pepper Strode, was the favourite in the bantamweight class after Jamie McGrath, winner of the past two titles and unbeaten in 42 fights, pulled out with a shoulder injury. McGrath and Day are not friends and McGrath helped in Strode’s corner for the final. Day swears she never noticed the basic attempt to upset her.
It was not a nice fight to watch. They both tried too hard and when it was over the computer score was even and a countback was necessary. After a few anxious minutes Day was announced the winner and the tears came before the medal was placed around her neck. The tears flowed as she walked down the corridor to the changing room with Reed, by her side, cursing and cussing to get his head right. “What are all those motherfuckers gonna say now?” Reed asked.
Minutes later the boxer was in the changing room sitting, her head in her bandaged hands as the tears fell. She was sobbing. “I told you sometimes you gotta do things your parents don’t understand. Didn’t I tell you that? Yes, I did,” continued Reed. Day looked up, her eyes bursting. “Don’t leave me,” she said to Reed. “I ain’t going nowhere,” he replied. Everybody cried. Five minutes later Day took my cellphone and called her parents.