No. 1051 “I FIGHT MEN” by Ajax
 (Part II -The Conclusion )
 
 

One way or another I ought to see one of these horrific- sounding mixed bouts.  It was okay writing short articles about serious training, and publishing those, but the readers would be wanting more body to the work soon.  I didn't know whether I could publish a straight account of the Regina vs Sonja fight.  I could certainly get the interview with Regina in, but the women had been topless in the ring, and I still wasn't sure about that.

It was the editor that settled it for me.  "Let's run the story without mentioning the bare boobs," he said, and added, on my enquiring, that we would use the topless pictures without comment.  We both knew we might cause a furore.  Anybody else would have concentrated on the topless nature of the fight.  Exertion wouldn't.  We would treat it as a perfectly natural aspect of female fighting, not worthy of comment.

We did it, and the complaints came in from every conceivable source.  None were important save the BBBC and the ABA, who threw up their hands in horror.  Oddly, no-one except a well-known prude who stuck her disgusted nose into that which she knew would disgust her further, called it pornographic.  The adjectives bandied bout were such ones as `dangerous', `unwise', or `inappropriate'.  One or two attacked the notion of female boxing as not being a sport, more an entertainment.  But we knew that this was rubbish, and didn't let it bother us.

My report didn't increase circulation, nor did it decrease it.  We thought that that was a healthy sign.  The report seemed to have been accepted with equanimity by the readers.

I didn't forget the female boxing scene, but I had other work to do and did it.  Nevertheless, Bob was as good as his word, and around a month later he phoned me.  Sonja was to be fighting a man in a week's time, Marty `Kid' Fox, a young lightweight, in only his fifth professional bout.  It was to be an eight-rounder only, but I was welcome to attend.

I remembered Marty Fox from his days as an amateur.  He had done well in the last Olympics, coming away with a bronze, and perhaps significantly for Sonja Collins, had been noted as a youth with a naturally good punch that had ended most of his fights inside the distance.  As a pro he was unbeaten.  I looked up his record.  Four wins, two inside the distance, and a draw.  His amateur record was almost as good, one hundred and six contests, eighty victories, twenty defeats, six draws.  Of his victories, no less than forty-seven had been inside the three round distance.  He had, himself, been stopped only twice as an amateur.  On paper, it looked as though Sonja would have her hands full.  True, fighting off ten and three-quarter stone, she was a middleweight and would have ten pounds advantage over Kid Fox, but I remembered him as having fast hands, and didn't rate her chances highly.

On impulse, I went over to the South London gym where Fox was said to be based, and spoke to his manager, Jim Baddeley.  Why, I wanted to know, had he agreed to take Marty into a fight with a woman?  Wasn't his man onto a hiding to nothing?

Baddeley was no lover of female boxers, that was for sure.  His lip almost curled as he answered my questions.

It seemed that they had been challenged by Sonja, and that Kid Fox was intrigued, insisting on taking the fight `to teach the woman a lesson'.  I formed the opinion that it was not so much Kid Fox as Baddeley who had felt that.

Since no public hall would handle the contest, of course, it was to be held in a Birmingham night club, and on a Sunday at that.  I hoicked out Tug Reeves to do the camera work, and headed in that direction on the appropriate afternoon.

Bob welcomed us with almost open arms.  Baddeley and he were not getting along well.  I was not surprised.  Sonja looked fit enough, but was a bit `down'.  It seemed that Baddeley had been bad-mouthing her, and he must have struck home.  I saw that as distinctly odd.  When we had met before, Sonja had seemed as confident a girl as one could find, and eager to prove herself, whether against male or female opposition, but she was at the front edge of this mixed sex movement, and it would have had to have been a heavy burden at times.

In my clumsy way I asked her what the trouble was.

"The bastard's forced me into a corner," she answered.  "I was wanting this as a toughener.  Now, I've got to win it."

"Can't you?" I asked.

"Perhaps.  I don't know.  Fox is a good lad, and he's on the up.  Okay, I'll take a clobbering, and it'll be hard to put me away, but beating an Olympic bronze on points – that's another matter."

"Perhaps you'll knock him out?" I suggested ingenuously, and Sonja smiled.

"Kid Fox?  That'll be the day.  No pro's floored him yet, and I don't have that kind of power."

Having seen what I'd seen of Miss Collins I had other ideas.  She'd scared the life out of me.  But I didn't know enough to be sure.  Luckily, Bob stepped in.

"Snap out of it, Sonja!  You can knock him out.  Anybody can knock anybody out if the weights are close enough and you're heavier."

"Yeah," the coffee-coloured boxer ground out, "If they go head-hunting."

Bob fell silent, and I began to understand Sonja's problem.  Even I could see that that was risky for a woman fighting a man on equal terms.  She'd be wide open downstairs, and Marty Fox was a heavy hitter.  I winced at the thought of what could happen to those full breasts of this courageous woman under those circumstances.  Sonja did not pull the wool over her own eyes.  She knew what would happen too.

"What has Baddeley been saying?" I wanted to know.

"Only that I don't belong in the same ring with his boy, and he'll see I don't get another mixed fight ever again."

"He couldn't make it stick!" I declared, then wondering, "Could he?"

"Not if I win.  But if Fox lays me out with breast-punching, Baddeley'll have made his point.  Then he could."

"My God!" I breathed, and it was fervent.  This time, it looked as though it was Sonja and not Marty Fox who was on a hiding to nothing.

Bob showed signs of impatience with her.  It was quite against the grain of his normally phlegmatic character, and I could see he was rattled as well this time.  "Sonja," he told her sharply, "what have I been teaching you?"

"To box," was her reply.

"And?"

"To take it, too."

"Well then.  You know you can take it, and so do I.  This is where your endurance starts to pay dividends."

"Christ, Bob!  This Marty's murder.  You saw him pulp Skug Jones."

"God, girl!  You would have pulped Skug Jones.  Everybody's pulped him!" He
paused.  "Anyway, it was you who wanted this, remember?"

She nodded, somewhat contrite.  "Yeah, but I never thought Baddeley'd rubbish me this bad."

"Then rubbish Marty Fox - in the ring.  That'll shut his mouth!"

"Bob, I don't think I can.  He'll be too hard for me.  I'll never take it."

For the first time since we'd been there, Bob smiled.  "You will, Sonja.  You will!"

Bob was well aware that Sonja was scared.  And she was.  I was scared for her, too.  Tug just looked amazed.

Fear.  Well, I'd encountered that before.  Those cyclo-cross girls had been fearful.  They had known how gruelling the pace was going to be.  But in the end it had fired them up.  I wouldn't be surprised to see the same happen here, but Sonja was alone, very much on her own, and it looked as though she was facing an ill-tempered fight.  What an angry Marty Fox might do to her, I didn't know.  What he could do, I had a pretty good idea, and I wouldn't have been in Sonja Collins's boots that night for a pension.

But by the time she was kitted up and ready, she'd steadied down a lot.  I didn't know all of what Bob had been saying to her, but a few minutes before the fight she looked as determined as I had ever seen a woman look.  I was afraid she'd need all that determination and a lot more.  She was facing eight rounds of sheer hell, and everybody knew it.

There was an interesting crowd.  A lot of them I remembered seeing from the fight with Regina Brown.  It looked as though the women boxers had just as much a following as the men in their limited way.  How many of these were perverts and oglers was questionable, but there were undoubtedly many admirers of the female boxer there as well as these.  Whatever else happened, Sonja Collins was not going to be without support.  I almost smiled at my own half pun before realizing that it wasn't going to be very funny for this milky-coffee girl who I felt I was going to get to know a lot better as the months passed.  I re-phrased my thought - she was not going to be without supporters.  Support of the other kind she would definitely be eschewing.

Some of the audience - it was hardly big enough for a `crowd' - were just the regular club crowd, likely to be drunken and raucous.  As I had noticed at the Brown/Collins fight, it was the quieter ones who followed the action most closely and whose interjections, when they came, were the most knowledgeable.

A bow-tied MC in a dinner jacket announced the fight calmly enough - calling it a special challenge contest between the two, and giving the relevant weights and records.  The enthusiasts applauded, the drunken regulars irched and crowed as those well steeped in the stench of the ale will, and I found my sympathies entirely with the serious enthusiasts who at least had some idea of what this bout might well cost Sonja Collins.

Both fighters were cheered into the ring, and the catcalls started as soon as Sonja slipped off her robe and stepped forth in her vibrant femininity.  She looked in great shape (in all senses) and the shout of `get her on her back' from one of the lewder louts I found offending me.

Then the bell sounded, they touched gloves, and came to battle.

It was a strange sight, made more so by the fighters' contrasting garb.  Sonja, as no doubt a woman should, wore brief, shiny shorts in bright emerald green, with a smaller than usual waistband and trim in white.  She wore red six-ounce gloves that looked small on her, and had her hair tied back in a loose ponytail with a broad emerald ribbon.  The boxing boots she wore for this fight looked new and matched the gloves, and were topped by white socks.  She seemed very professional.

Marty Fox was accoutred in long gold-coloured satin shorts, loose where Sonja's were girlishly tight-fitting, and almost reaching his knees.  His boots were black and looked well worn and comfortable.  Also black were the tiny-looking gloves, themselves six ounces in weight that clad his educated fists.  Looking lean and fit, he moved towards his female opponent with an almost feral grace that frankly frightened me.  As a boxer he was neat, precise and fast, licking out left leads like the skilled fighter he was, and seeming surprised that Sonja met him with almost equal skill.

Fox was a young fighter, only twenty, with short dark hair and a noticeable stubble on his chin.  He began with an air of impatience which I felt certain had been inculcated by the bulbous Baddeley, who sat chewing a fat cigar in a ringside seat.  His second was an older man, probably his trainer, who viewed the fight more keenly than I had expected, and waited for Fox to settle down to his job.

He did it well, but then, so did Sonja.  Twice in the first minute he tried to right-hook her to the side of the head.  Twice she evaded the attempt, and dealt a sharp dig to his ribs.

They fought the first round like a pair of boys, cutting and thrusting, and neither gaining a very significant advantage.  It was clean, fast fighting, without clinches or mauling, as though each was daring the other to outbox him or her.

I was a little surprised, having expected Fox to get straight into Sonja and try to make her buckle under the weight of his blows.  Baddeley did not look pleased, though both trainers rubbed down their fighters and spoke earnestly to them in low tones between rounds.

Being rather nearer to Fox's corner, I heard his trainer urge his man to `go get her', as the seconds were called out for the start of the second round.  I imagined Bob telling Sonja to be careful, but the pair came to the centre of the ring and re-engaged with a vigour that astounded me.  I had never seen a woman show the same degree of vigorous activity that Sonja did.  She moved with a sureness and conviction that belied totally the worried air she had had during the afternoon, and the first clash of the second round showed Fox that he was in against a fighter who could box, when after dealing him a series of jabs to the face, she drove a powerful right into his ribs, and staggered him rightwards.

It caused him to miss wildly with a left hook, and for a moment the up and comer looked foolish.  The baser elements of the audience jeered, Baddeley scowled, and the trainer looked hurt.

Sonja, wisely, fell back to defend.  No fighter jeered by an audience was ever pleased, and she prepared herself to face the kind of onslaught that a man of Fox's skill could launch in a moment.

Predictably, Fox cut loose, and Sonja's tensed stomach muscles were sorely tried by a right hook that would have driven through a barn door.  The left uppercut he followed it with slammed her onto the ropes, and she tucked in her elbows to save her breasts from the straight right he drove at the left one.  Sonja took it on the arms, straightened, and fired a straight left that could hardly be called a jab into his nose.

Seeing stars the youngster drew back, but she knew that that one punch would never stop him.  All it would do was goad him into action.  Her best hope was that he would become rash in his approach, and allow her to score on the counter, but it freed her from the danger of the ropes, and before he could get back into her, she had stepped clear and come to the centre of the ring.

She tried to hold the position, but it cost her the first knockdown, when he ripped a cross under her firing left and spread her left breast all across her chest.

Sonja Collins hit the canvas knees first, and momentarily grey-faced with the pain of the punch.  The referee was in quickly to send Fox to a neutral corner, taking up the count at three, and mounting it steadily towards eight before the woman, waiting on her knees, rose to continue.

I felt my body go rigid at the thought of rising to face more.  Sonja had to be in pain still, yet she rose to fight, the bruise on her left breast, to the outside and beneath, already fiery, telling me what she was suffering.  Remembering what I had seen her take the first day we had met gave me some idea that she would be able to continue to fight, but the drunken mob now called on Fox to pulp her.

She was still in the ring centre when she rose, and Fox tore back into her like an express train.  That was his first mistake.  He drove a left to her face, bringing pain-tears to her eyes, but left his body open.  Sonja, standing her ground (incredibly to my eyes), took the onslaught, blocking and swaying, then ripped her own right in a searching stab towards the solar plexus.  In took him there and stopped him in his tracks.  For a second they seemed to hang in tableau, before, stepping forward, Sonja, with great courage, exposed her aching breast to the man's fists again while she slammed a left hook towards his face.

Luckily for them both, his arm rose to deflect the blow instead of descending, and it finished near his right ear, its weight unbalancing the young man again.

I was amazed at the power Sonja put into her punches.  The left shoulder came round, and her weight forced him away from her.  Again she stepped forward when by all criteria of defence she should have been stepping back, and she sought his jaw with her right.  She failed to find it, and they fell into a clinch, her firm breasts drilling into his chest.  It seemed to remind him that he was in the ring with a woman, whose weakness lay about the chest, and he dug punches into her bosom as they broke away, not hurtful like the searing right, but enough to let Sonja know that he was not going to be averse to using his advantage there.

They both backed away, afraid for a moment of each other's power, and spent of breath.

The rest lasted two seconds before Sonja moved forward again, left leading.  I was appalled by her ability to absorb what she had taken, and even suffering what she was, to recommence the attack.  Fox defended, and then tried to cut loose again.  This time the woman's speed was almost the equal of his, and fast though his hands were, he scored little except a straight right to the mouth which did little more than push her head back.

They parted again, breathing shallowly, and closed right above where I was sitting.

Fox aimed to score with an uppercut to the jaw, but started it too low, and slammed his fist up between her breasts.  The heavy flesh of her bust took the way off the blow and she was able to ride it, though she must have been hurt again by the grazing effect of the wet leather as it skidded through her cleavage.  I shuddered.  That had never been meant to take her breasts, yet it had speared her with another, and different kind of pain in that region.

Now looking hurt, she backed off and went into a defensive posture.  Unable or unwilling to follow up, he stood back too, and before they could close again, the bell ended round two.

I watched Sonja sit down.  She looked shaken, but still determined.  Bob went straight for the grazes to the inside of both breasts where the uppercut had torn through her, and ran a styptic over them.  She winced at the pain, and I almost smiled again.  She showed more reaction to the treatment than to the original injury, but had it been me I would have been terrified.  That, she wasn't, but there was a look of concern about her features that told me that she knew that there was a very long way to go here.  As yet, she had made little or no impression on a man she had to beat.  Her left breast had to be an orb of agony, and I thought for a moment what a sensational headline I could make out of that thought, though immediately thrust it away.  Exertion was not a sensational magazine.  Had I been covering this for the gutter press I could have had a field day.

I watched Bob work on her and was struck by the fact that he dealt very gently with the left breast where the bruise was now darkening, and realized that quite a lot of action had gone on since she had suffered the knockdown early in the second.  That she seemed to have recovered her composure, and was still fighting hard was remarkable.  But she was, and as the third started I found myself fascinated by the possibilities that lay before me.

I marvelled at Sonja's vitality as she came out for the third round.  Mine would surely have gone with the pain and pressure of the second, but they came out looking eager to destroy each other, the woman no less than her male opponent.  She danced lightly on her toes as they circled each other, before Fox attacked hard, and drove Sonja to the ropes.  Once there, she came back with uppercuts and hooks to the body, took a few light cuffs around the face with seeming equanimity and then followed up as Fox faltered slightly, probably surprised at her unwillingness to cave in before his attacks.

It was no comfortable first minute for either of them, as Sonja's best blows rapped Fox's face, and a left hook to the body stopped him again.  He returned the compliment by hammering at her guts, but she came out of it hardly scathed in that area.

Perhaps inevitably it was her third vulnerability that had her in trouble again towards the middle of the round.  Clearly, Sonja had been instructed to start her head hunting sometime during this round, and that meant coming in with guard high, and having to risk offering her breasts to Fox's hooks.  Two she took in return for hard cuffs to his face, but she could not find the perfect range, and the third, burying itself into the same spot as the one which had floored her in the second, drove her to fall away and cover.  I caught the message of pain given by the arch of her body as she tucked in her elbows again, but she did not fall this time, only defended, and Fox was battering at her again, the sweat flying from her face and showering the ringsiders.

Baddeley suddenly leaned forward and seemed to take a greater interest in the proceedings.  Now, Sonja Collins had to take some head-punching, and the marking showing on her face bore mute testimony to the sharpness that Fox was capable of finding.  Towards the end of the round he threw in a staccato burst of fast, short head-punches that Sonja reeled under for a moment, before relinquishing her defensive stance and opening out again.  It worked for a time, keeping Fox away, blows peppering him around the face, but it was only in the last seconds of the round that she found another heavy right, a hook that she drove in under the heart.

I saw his legs go to rubber for a moment before his instinct took over and he hit out towards the head again, forcing the woman away.

Sonja moved in again, and went for his left ribs again, but she had to carry the pain of another brutal swing to the left breast before they both spun away, and Sonja turned back to face him.  Fox, though, didn't stop spinning, fell into the ropes and went down.

He hit the canvas a moment before the bell ended the round, and I could hardly believe my eyes when the referee began to count over him.  I had forgotten for a moment that I was seeing a fight where counts continued after the bell.  Fox took six before rising and virtually staggering to his corner.  Sonja, looking exhausted (as well she might) after the dazing pounding she had taken, flopped onto her stool and left herself in Bob's caring hands.

She was beginning to look really badly marked now, both around the face and body, and had taken a lot of bruising blows to her breasts in the last three minutes.  Bob wiped the sweat off her carefully, and I saw her nod as they conversed.

Fox's ribs were being massaged as he sat in the corner, and his second twice raised both his arms above his head, as though administering old-fashioned artificial respiration.  I wasn't knowledgeable enough to know whether this was a good sign for the girl or not.  I knew that she must have been getting hurt now - no-one went nine minutes against this man without feeling something, and the way she had had to stand and take his blows in the middle of the third when she must desperately have wanted to back off told me much about her character.  Perhaps Fox's discomfiture held out a ghost of a chance for her, but I felt sure that he would have recovered completely by the start of the fourth.

I sensed that he was slowed and that Sonja was handling his attacks more easily in the fourth, but he was still landing as many or more sharp punches than she was, and another difficulty for the women in any possible other mixed bouts was shown up.  The striking-speed of male fighters looked, on this showing, to be superior.  That took nothing away from Sonja's great effort, though.  Through the fourth she was holding Fox, and glancing at Baddeley I could see that he was becoming annoyed.

Sonja glistened as they plied to and fro about the ring, and it was easy to tell that she was finding it difficult to match Fox's pace.  Difficult, but not impossible.  I might have scored that round even, and as the fight moved on into the fifth, the girl's immense vitality still shone through as she picked herself up by her bootstraps and actually moved into pepper the man's head again.  She suffered to the body, of course, but though he scored with several good blows to the solar plexus, it was he who broke away first, his nose pouring blood.  Sonja pursued and they clinched again, the ref calling a sharp `Break!' as they threatened to tie up.

On the break Fox hit her to the right breast with almost as good a blow as the one he had scored to the left earlier, and her audible gasp had the drunken crew bawling for him to get in and `knock her tits off'.  I shuddered again, partly at the crudity of the expostulation, but mainly at the thought of what Sonja was having to endure.  I remembered Bob's exposition of the female quality of endurance at our first meeting, but I had not seen it seriously tested before today.

Now, it was.  Sonja was badly hurt this time, and it could only have been sheer guts that made her come straight back into the fight.  He caught her again, and twice more, to the breasts before she managed to score to his head, but she took it all and pressed forward.

This display of cold courage from the girl silenced the bawlers, but the enthusiasts became more and more animated and supportive as they saw the need to really encourage her to go on.  Their opening up so late in the fight cheered me - she needed every encouragement she could get now - and it seemed to uplift her.  There were certainly some people in that club-room who wanted to see her victorious, and it did a little, a very little it was true, but at any rate something to ease the sheer hell her breasts were giving her.

So intense was her attack and so sustained that Fox was forced to raise his guard to keep her out, and the moment he did so she struck again, her thumping right, the shoulder impelling it, driving again towards his solar plexus.  Fox seemed to fold round her fist and was dropped limply to the canvas by the left hook to the jaw that followed the right.

I stared, hardly able to believe what I was seeing.  The referee seemed as shocked, and was very slow to start the count, coming in at three in the wake of the timekeeper.

Fox rolled onto his belly, grabbing for the region where Sonja's fist had been swallowed by his guts, and looked, to me, at any rate, fairly green.  By the count of five he had come to his knees, and was trying to rise by seven.  The referee held Sonja away until Fox was up, but he had hardly set his guard before she was in again.

His hands shot up as she came, but it wasn't the head she went for, using her left to hammer the other side of his diaphragm, and lifting his one-forty pounds off the canvas before he fell gobbling back to it.  This time the battered girl turned and walked smartly to a neutral corner, delight mirrored all over her battered face.

Mixed boxing had perhaps taken root.

She was right to do so, for the count, as she had known, was a formality.  Marty `Kid' Fox lay there fighting to regain his breath while the count reached ten, and even then was unable to get to his knees before his second and trainer dashed in to give him assistance.

Even before the result was formally announced, Baddeley lumbered to his feet, bit through his cigar, and left the room with a notable degree of ostentation.

Bob, welcoming the victorious Sonja Collins back to her corner, felt that there was a distinct possibility that young Fox would be looking for a new manager in the morning.  It even crossed his mind to offer his services, but he put the thought away.  Handling Sonja Collins was going to be a big problem from now on.

I followed them back to the dressing room, and saw the girl's shoulders droop as the door closed behind her.

It had been a brave effort on her part - and now I was about to watch her shower again.

As the steam closed over my glasses I wondered what this brave girl would have to tell my readers!

END
 

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