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Radio National's The Sports Factor
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with Amanda Smith
26/01/01 Chick Boxing Summary: The Sports Factor Summer Series this week goes six rounds with women who box. What does the recent entry of women into boxing mean for the Manly Art? And for our ideas about women and aggression? At a time when boxing itself is considered by many to be a deviant sport, why are more and more women getting in the ring? We'll meet champion professional boxer AMANDA "The Cannon" BUCHANAN, fight promoter MURRAY THOMSON, trainer SAM VISCIGLIO, and MISCHA MERZ, amateur boxer and author of "Bruising - A Journey Through Gender". Details or Transcript: THEME Amanda Smith: Gird your loins, because this week in the Sports Factor Summer Series we’re going six rounds with women whose sport is boxing. When a woman pulls on a pair of boxing gloves, and steps into the ring, is she striking a blow for her gender? Or, is she simply replicating all the worst aspects of aggressive male culture, in a sport that’s considered by many these days to be deviant? Although female fights are banned in New South Wales, elsewhere around Australia, increasing numbers of women are developing their expertise in the ‘manly art’. MUSIC Amanda Buchanan: I’ve always loved the thrill of anything that gives me a little bit of fear, and believe me, in the ring there is always that little bit of fear. And for me it’s not so much fear of being hurt but fear of not doing the best that I can and proving to the world that females can fight. Murray Thomson: Girls fighting, I mean a lot of people don’t like seeing it. I mean I’ve got to admit I don’t like seeing women fight, but the thing is that they want to do it, so what can you do? It’s a free country and me as a promoter, I give them an opportunity to do what they want to do. Sam Visciglio: ‘Women aren’t built for boxing!’ Well I might have said that back in the early ‘70s but now, 30 years later, or 25 years later, my attitude has changed a lot you know. They can hit, they can be hurt. I really can’t see a difference. Woman: You really have to be pretty honest with yourself. You know, am I sadistic? If I’m a coward that might mean that I am, you know I just want to bash somebody up, I don’t care whether they’re smaller than me or less experienced or weaker, I just want to hurt somebody, you know, is that why I’m doing it? Incidentally, the answer’s no, but every step of the way you have to ask yourself are you a bad person, are you a good person, are you doing this for the right reasons? Is this really what you want to do? Are these sort of risks proving anything? Is it stupidity, or is it recklessness? You know, there’s a lot of self-exploration going on. BELL FIGHT MC: Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get it on for six rounds in the Welterweight Women in Boxing. Gender equality bring their stamp of authority on boxing, the traditional Marquis of Queensberry, men’s dominated sport. Amanda Smith: Amanda Buchanan had her first amateur boxing fight in 1996. That makes her a pioneer of women’s boxing in this country. A former world kick-boxing champion, Amanda’s the current Commonwealth Super-Bantamweight professional boxing title-holder. PUNCHING BAG Amanda Smith: Amanda, who’s known as ‘The Cannon’ Buchanan, started her boxing training in the United States. PUNCHING BAG Amanda Buchanan: And I went down to a gym in downtown L.A. one time. I believe I was probably the first female to walk in the gym and I believe by looking around, the first white person to walk into the gym, and that was quite daunting. I walked in, then I was like ‘Oh my gosh’, and they were looking at me as ‘What are you doing here?’ and I was like ‘Ooh’. Then once I started training the gentlemen that were in the gym basically looked and thought, ‘Well she’s here to train, and train hard’, and they accepted the training that I did was real and I wasn’t ditsy and wasn’t girlie on the bag, and I was serious about my sport. And so they took it seriously, and from then on when I went back to that gym I was accepted as part of their training group, which I found wonderful. Amanda Smith: When and where was your first fight? Amanda Buchanan: My first amateur boxing fight was in America, yes, I had a couple of fights over there, then I had a couple of fights over here, amateur fights, and then went on to progress to win the Australian female title; I actually fought a girl that was about 20-odd kilos heavier, because there wasn’t the females in the sport at the time, and I wanted to fight. And then progressed to win the Commonwealth Boxing Title - Professional. Amanda Smith: But think back to your very first fight, boxing fight, can you describe what it was like and how you felt before, during and after? Amanda Buchanan: The first amateur boxing fight and then again I suppose the professional boxing fight, they tend to have an opinion of women that we do need to be extra protected, and they made me actually wear a chest protector which there is no medical grounds for. I mean it’s unbelievable that the people that make the decisions on whether we should protect our chests or breasts, are gentlemen that actually have no medical accreditation, and they make the decision, and I find that sort of a bit of a problem, because I find it very cumbersome to actually wear one; it’s intrusive, you can’t move as well, you can’t defend yourself as well. Amanda Smith: Do women punch each other on the chest? Amanda Buchanan: I mean I’ve been hit there, and it doesn’t hurt any more than being hit in the arm. I mean for someone that’s been hit hard all over the body, yes, there’s absolutely no difference in the actual pain between getting a dead arm and a punch in the boob. Amanda Smith: How does it feel then when you’ve laid a punch on another woman in the ring, and you’ve hurt her, you know you’ve hurt her? Amanda Buchanan: Not to sound Neanderthal or anything like that, it actually feels beautiful. And basically they’re in there in the same capacity, trying to do exactly the same thing to you. It lifts you up. When you know you’ve got someone hurt, then you become more complete, more full, and you just want to keep going, it just lifts, yes. Amanda Smith: Have you sustained much damage in the boxing ring? Amanda Buchanan: Not immense amounts. I mean obviously your black eyes, your fat lips your bloody noses, I’ve probably had more damage at training than I actually have in the ring. I do a lot of sparring with men, I’ve had a couple of broken noses. Amanda Smith: Do you worry about having your face rearranged? Amanda Buchanan: As I said before, it is like a chess game and I believe if you work your defence enough, your face won’t be rearranged. I mean my defence, every time I train, is getting better and better, and I still believe I look quite pretty. I don’t look like a bruiser, if you saw me in the street I don’t believe you would think I was an aggressive fighter or a rough-nut. And I don’t believe that my face will be way messy, and if it starts to become so, then I’ll definitely give it away. Amanda Smith: Well as well as boxing competitively, you’ve moved into training others to box. Do you train women differently to men? Do you relate to them differently or approach the training differently? Amanda Buchanan: Yes you definitely have to approach it differently. Men tend to have a lot more grunt. They automatically want to hit the bag hard, whereas women want to learn the technique but don’t want to necessarily get the penetration on the bag or on the pads or on a person. I think there’s just that natural little bit more aggression in a male. I think it’s there in females, it just needs to be brought out. So you have to definitely approach it differently. And males, because they think they can hit, because they were born male, tend to pick up the technique a lot slower. So I find that there’s definitely two different approaches. PUNCHING Amanda Buchanan: Try and work some long punches, don’t let him get in so close to you all the time. Keep your jab to keep him out Rain, stick that jab, nice and long. Good girl. Keep working, come on cop it and come back. That’s it. Pop the jab. And ding ding. That was good, that’s good. Amanda Smith: How do you then teach a woman to box aggressively, to garner that kind of aggression that may have been suppressed or not there culturally? Amanda Buchanan: Sometimes you’ve just got to be a little bit aggressive with them, and I mean by demonstration also. Most women that I train are bigger than myself, and if I show them I can hit the bag and get it moving a mile, and show them that we can have the power and just explain to them that we’ve been taught not to be aggressive and that we all have it in us and just to get there. Make them scream when they hit the bag. FIGHT MC: Occupying the Red corner, from Corio in Geelong, Katherine Zutt. And across the ring, occupying the Blue corner, would you welcome the lady they dub ‘The Rain of Fire’ Mako …. Amanda Smith: Last Friday night, in the very outer Melbourne suburb of Ferntree Gully, a crowd of about 2½ thousand, mostly men, gathered for a big fight night. Seven bouts on the card, including this one women’s bout. This is professional boxing, which means no headguards, and no chest protectors for the ladies. Murray Thomson was the promoter. Murray Thomson: I’ve promoted seven shows. I got into promoting boxing because some of my amateurs progressed to the professional level, and I so I didn’t have to rely on other promoters and sit by the phone waiting for the phone calls. I just thought ‘No, I’ll just promote myself.’ So that’s how I got into that. Amanda Smith: Now you were the promoter of the big nights of professional boxing last week, Murray, and on the card one of the feature fights was a women’s bout; is this the first time you’ve had women on the card at your fights? Murray Thomson: Yes, this is the first time that we’ve had women, yeah. Amanda Smith: How did that come about? Murray Thomson: Well Kathy Zutt, the girl from Geelong, she’s a great girl, she’s just turned 18 and she has trouble finding opponents as an amateur. She had five amateur fights with five wins, and she just couldn’t get any more fights; no-one wanted to fight her. And she’s a lovely girl, and I finally got her a fight. I had been reluctant because Kathy was on my back for a long time to get her a fight before I finally did it. Amanda Smith: Why? Why were you a bit reluctant? Murray Thomson: Basically because I wasn’t sure how the public would react, no other reason. That’s it. Amanda Smith: So was it a good thing to do as a promoter, as far as how the public reacted? Murray Thomson: Yes it was. I mean as far as the class of the girls, I mean I’ve seen a lot of women fight on American TV and they’re pretty ordinary actually, like they haven’t got much style about them and sometimes it gets used as a bit of a novelty act. But I knew Kathy Zutt was very skilled, because I’ve seen her. She’s actually fought one of my girls who I’ve got training a couple of years ago, and I know she’s a class act, and I heard very good things about Rain Mako, and we knew it was going to be a top fight. And as it turned out, it was one of the best fights of the night. Amanda Smith: Did the crowd take the women’s fight seriously, as seriously as the men’s bouts do you think? Murray Thomson: I think when the fight first started I think a lot of people, most people didn’t know what to expect, but like a minute in, they thought ‘These girls are fair dinkum’, because it was just like two guys fighting basically, like the skill level was there. So like a minute after the fight started they started taking it more seriously than they probably did before the fight. Amanda Smith: Well the main event of the night was the Australian Lightweight Title Fight, men. But was the women’s fight do you think any kind of drawcard? Murray Thomson: It definitely was a drawcard. It brought along a lot of people that wouldn’t normally go to the fights, and actually after the ladies’ fight a lot of people left, so they only went there solely for the female fight. Amanda Smith: So, Murray, do you reckon you’ll be putting more women’s fights on your cards for fight nights? Murray Thomson: I’ll say yes. I’ve got to check and make sure that the girls are up to a certain level before, and I don’t want it become like a circus act; they’ve got to be just as skilled as the guys. Yes I’ll be putting them on again. People are interested in it, so why not? Amanda Smith: Do you think there are still though any misconceptions in the wider public about women who box? I mean for anyone who hasn’t seen women box, is it easy to get the wrong idea about it? Murray Thomson: Definitely. I mean I suppose the general perception is that they’re butch girls. But I mean all the ones I’ve met, I mean you couldn’t meet nicer ladies, they are genuine ladies and they’re not like you know, bush-pigs, you know. Sorry, but … Amanda Smith: Now Mischa Merz is an amateur boxer with three fights under her belt so far, and another one coming up next week. Mischa’s also the author of a new book called ‘Bruising – A Journey Through Gender’. This journey began for Mischa six years ago, when she started going to Boxercise classes for fitness. It wasn’t long though, before she started wanting more. Mischa Merz: And then I really just left the boxercise stuff behind and kind of got quite seduced by the ‘sweet science’. Amanda Smith: Well boxing has long been considered the most masculine of all sports, because I guess it’s violence is the least disguised of all sports. What has becoming more and more involved in boxing made you think and question about women and violence? Mischa Merz: Yes, I think, you know we’re always assuming that men know how to fight, and it’s quite a shock, I didn’t expect women that I sparred with to be as aggressive as they were. And after a while I started to realise that most of my kind of obvious injuries, like my bruises and my cuts and other things, had always come as a result of sparring with women, they were rarely a consequence of sparring with men because there’s this chivalry at play in the boxing ring. So when you’re experiencing that kind of aggression from other women, you can’t pretend any more really, that all women are sort of passive, nurturing, good, better, more virtuous, kinder, more willing to sort things out by talking and more in touch with their feelings, and all those sorts of things because I’ve just experienced their aggression, and I’ve experienced my own aggression. So I thought that really does challenge this whole notion about the gentler sex. Amanda Smith: Well Mischa, in becoming a boxer, where have you encountered the greatest resistance or disapproval, if indeed you have? Is it from men or is it women? Mischa Merz: Outside the boxing world, I get a few eye-rolling kind of responses, like ‘Oh, why do you want to get involved in a sport like that?’ Men seem to find it really kind of interesting, they want to talk about it; I almost think they sort of find it a bit sexy sometimes, and so they sort of play on that. But I don’t know whether that’s just trying to diminish the fact that I could probably land a clean punch on them and probably better than they could, so they’re sort of trying to make light of it. And I think a lot of women don’t understand aggression in a sporting context, because they haven’t had any experience of it. I mean a friend of the family said to me once ‘Why can’t you just sit down and talk about it? Do you have to hit each other?’ You know, a teacher, an educated person, didn’t understand that it was a sport and ritualistic and had nothing to do with conversation or sorting out disagreements. So I know there’s an objection there and I know that that objection probably comes most strongly from women who feel that this is a connection with the darker side of masculinity and women should overcome that, rather than trying to emulate it, and emulating it is a sort of hollow, backward step. Amanda Smith: What about getting hurt yourself, Mischa? Do you think about things like brain damage? I mean there’s plenty of boxers who have suffered, died, from brain damage and there’s a very strong anti-boxing lobby from medical associations on the grounds that it is medically dangerous. Mischa Merz: Yes. I mean it is dangerous, it’s a risk. There hasn’t been a lot of research done on it though, surprisingly. I mean the AMA’s comfortable in saying it’s an unacceptable risk and I think there’s a bit of a moral implication there that it’s unacceptable to take this risk; I’m telling you. Like what kind of risk of physical danger is acceptable? I don’t know. Don’t jump out of this plane, you might die? Don’t climb this mountain, you might fall and kill yourself? You know, maybe we should all just be watching TV and not doing anything too dangerous in case we get hurt. I mean on the one hand we have this culture of increasingly kind of voyeuristic, violent spectatorship, and on the other hand we’re coddled, you know, we don’t want to try anything that might hurt us. And I do occasionally think about those things, but I do box as an amateur. Amanda Smith: Which means you wear a headguard. Mischa Merz: Yes, but I think the headguards are more to make people feel better, I actually think it’s safer not to wear one, because the damage comes when your head’s a sort of whiplash effect, and that happens whether you’re wearing a headguard or not. The headguard stops the superficial injuries, so people feel better about not being cut and not having so many scrapes on them and bumps, but I’m really not sure that they do that much to protect the brain. I think the risk is part of the sport; it wouldn’t be what it is without that risk. Amanda Smith: And it’s a risk you’re prepared to take? Mischa Merz: Well to me, unlike the AMA, I find it an acceptable risk, because I have learnt a lot about myself through the sport, and I’ve developed a lot of interesting relationships with people and it’s been an enriching experience for me. I don’t object to them alerting people to the risks, I think that’s a good thing, and I think it’s pointless arguing against that because there is a risk, but whether it’s unacceptable I think is a personal choice. I think it’s good to inform people about the risks, but I don’t think it’s fair to say Don’t do it. YELLS/BELL/FIGHT MC: That’s the bell for Round 2…. Amanda Smith: Now in actual touts at fight nights, women box other women. But in training they often spar with men. And I’ve got to say that the first time I watched this kind of sparring, a couple of weeks ago, I found it a deeply confronting experience, because a man who thumps a woman, in general society, is guilty of about the lowest form of masculine aggression that there is. So how do male boxers feel about sparring with women? As well as being a promoter, Murray Thomson is a boxing trainer. Murray Thomson: It’s hard, because myself and the other guys, you don’t put everything you’ve got in the punches, and it becomes more of a feinting game, and you still punch but you have reservations about hitting her hard. Amanda Smith: Why? Murray Thomson: Because she’s a girl, I don’t know, being a man, she’s a woman, and it’s a bit harder, and there aren’t enough girls around to spar each other. See, most of the girls who fight spar guys because there’s not enough girls around. Amanda Smith: Another bloke who trains women to box, but who has a somewhat different attitude to it, is Sam Visciglio. Sam’s a former Australian Welterweight Champion. One of the women he trains is Mischa Merz who we heard from earlier. And Sam’s actually developed a preference for training women over men. Sam Visciglio: Well look, I like working with women. I find that if I train a young guy or a guy in his mid-20s, sometimes they think they can have it over you through physical strength; they forget about that there is skill involved. Whereas with the ladies, they listen carefully to what you tell them, they respect that there is skill involved and not just broad, whereas yes, there are different attitudes between ladies and guys, and I really like working with ladies more so than with guys. Amanda Smith: Nevertheless, in training a woman, do you worry about hurting her, about altering the shape of her face in a way that wouldn’t trouble you with a bloke? Sam Visciglio: Look, the sport is a tough sport, and you’d kid yourself if you thought that you’d walk away from a training session without being hurt, without having a bloody nose or a broken nose, or be winded and when I train with ladies, straight away I gauge their skill level, from the moment that we walk into actually confront each other, to spar, you know you can see that the ladies are nervous. Sometimes the ladies are more nervous than the guys because they’re afraid to land a punch and hurt you, and it’s many times when the ladies land a punch and they’d say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean it’, but then after a while, after say a few months, that they realise that they have to hit, otherwise their opponent will hit them back. And they’re in that ring for one reason really, well they’ve chosen to be in that ring for one reason only, and they really understand then what it’s all about to actually fight. I don’t really hold back, I gauge their skill level and then I fight accordingly. It’s like, look, I don’t know if it sounds right, but it’s like ‘Welcome to the Club.’ Mischa Merz: …I can see what you mean, when you smother her, she can’t hit … Sam Visciglio: You’ll see the next round, what I’ll do, I’ll give her a bit of a break to do something, but you look carefully where my hands are, but when I hit her, watch where they are, they’re from my chin. Watch. I’ll give her a bit of space, she’ll go hammer, hammer, hammer, the minute she gets a little bit, like that, you’ll see my right hand, I’ll lead with my right hand, I’ll go from my chin straight to her chin, you know what I mean? Amanda Smith: Well, if women are gaining acceptance (to varying degrees) within the boxing fraternity, what about with spectators? Those who’ve traditionally gone along to watch men fight? Is a woman’s bout just a curiosity? Does it give some kind of prurient, erotic thrill to boxing’s predominantly male audience? Mischa Merz. Mischa Merz: The curiosity element is strong, because people aren’t really convinced I suppose that women are capable of it, because of all these questions about gender and aggression. And when they see that it happens with a fair degree of skill and sort of cool-headedness and there’s no-one losing the plot, or … Amanda Smith: Crying. Mischa Merz: No, nobody cries. I think everybody is sort of relieved in a way that it’s not as hideous as they thought it would be. And also the sexual element of boxing has always been there in a way, when men do it, I mean they’re barely clothed, and they’ve got these satin shorts that are sort of very silky and sensual and there’s a lot of physicality and a lot of admiration of physique and people talking about the way a boxer is lean and looks fit; it’s always been there. But it applies to women in the same way I think. That’s probably what makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable about it, because it highlights a sort of homoeroticism that’s been part of the sport that nobody dares talk about, and whenever women enter the scene, those sort of things get harder not to see. So maybe that’s an additional reason why people feel uncomfortable watching women fight. Amanda Smith: Well at a time when boxing is clearly a much less popular and mainstream sport than it has been in the past, and increasingly has this questionable reputation as a sport, can the entrée of more and more women into the ring in fact in some way reinvigorate boxing? Can women save boxing? Mischa Merz: Well I think that’s an irony that hasn’t slipped by too many people just yet. I mean it’s quite possibly on the cards, that this sport that has excluded women for so long will be saved by them in the end, that the respectability that it never had will be gained by this, you know, ‘Well if women are doing it, it must be OK, it can’t be sort of brutally masculine, violent and horrible.’ And I think a few people have twigged onto that and have realised that for this sport that’s so much on the back foot, as soon as women start doing it, it changes the dynamics of it, and it just attracts so much attention, people are just fascinated. Amanda Smith: Well boxing has traditionally attracted young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, and most notably migrant or indigenous populations, when those populations are in a way at the bottom of the social scale. There’s that theory of ethnic succession in boxing, where for example in America, the majority of boxers in the early 1900s were Irish and then they were replaced by Jews, then Italians, then African-Americans, and Hispanics. Where does the entry of women into boxing fit into that scenario? Is it kind of gender succession? Mischa Merz: Yes, I mean it really could be. It says a lot about power, because it is about power in many ways, and the fact that women are stepping into the ring is a sign of this kind of desire for a certain kind of power, and a hunger for it, and a deprivation of it. I mean it sort of signals to me that this is a way of grasping a certain kind of power and success perhaps definitively, that’s like ‘I am powerful, I am strong,’ you can’t just say women should be strong, it’s no longer lip service, it’s a fact. And I think in slightly different ways, it’s the same for people from migrant backgrounds or from sort of poor economic backgrounds, that it’s a way of attaining a kind of personal power that’s definitive, and it’s not dependent on anybody else giving you something, a job or an equal opportunity. Amanda Smith: There is a paradox, I mean there’s a million paradoxes in boxing, but there is a paradox in you, Mischa, a middle-class, tertiary educated woman, entering this rough-house, blood and guts world of boxing. Mischa Merz: It’s interesting. It’s a personal thing as well. I don’t think my class and my attraction to boxing need necessarily be linked, but there are definitely more middle-class women than middle-class men boxing, I would say. It used to be the case that men kind of had the excuse, I think, that they had to fight because there was no unemployment benefits and if they had no job, they had no skills, this was the only way they could feed their families and survive, and it pays pretty poorly now, and there are still quite a surprising number of people willing to do it for the crap money, and amateurs willing to do it for nothing, so there’s something that draws people to fighting that goes beyond class, gender, race and a lot of other things, it’s very, very personal. BOXING MATCH/BELL/FIGHT MC: Come on, how about a big round of applause for ladies with tremendous skill, not only in gender … Amanda Buchanan: It’s a definite type of person that wants to get into the ring, and there’s different people that get into the ring for different reasons. Some do it because they love to fight, some do it because the want the attention. There’s many, many different reasons as to why, but the heart of a fight is you the love of the fight, and if you’ve got that, there’s nothing you can do about it. Sam Visciglio: It’s a funny game because that’s where attitudes change, you know, you could say one thing out of that ring, but once you just set foot in that ring, things change, attitudes change, ladies forget about the feminine side of them, and yes, they’re not out to scratch you, they’re actually out to punch you. Amanda Buchanan: And it’s definitely not a male sport, it’s a person sport. Is it male to climb a tree, or female to climb a tree? You know, if you want to climb a tree, climb a tree. Mischa Merz: It’s a difficult sport, it’s a problematic sport for a spectator and a participant, and I think that’s what makes it so compelling, for me anyway. There’s always that tension between sort of admiring the athleticism and the sporting aspect of it, and feeling a little bit ambivalent and feeling that maybe you shouldn’t be enjoying this, or that you’re just trying to kid yourself that it’s really the grace and the beauty and the physicality that you’re enjoying, when you’re really just enjoying the sheer brutality of it. BELL/CHEERS Amanda Smith: And we heard there from boxer Mischa Merz, who’s the author of the book ‘Bruising – A Journey Through Gender’. And also from Mischa’s trainer, Sam Visciglio, boxer and trainer Amanda Buchanan and promoter Murray Thomson. The Sports Factor is produced by Michael Shirrefs, and I’m Amanda Smith. Thanks for your company. THEME Guests on this program:
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