A Book of American Martyrs(218)
That evening, at the Cleveland Sports Arena, on a card with a much-promoted middleweight boxing match between two top-ranked (male) contenders, was the title fight for the Midwest Boxing League Women’s Welterweight championship—(title-holder) Siri Aya “Icewoman” vs. D.D. Dunphy “Hammer of Jesus.”
This time Naomi had a better seat: third row, center. A complimentary ticket courtesy of Dayton Fights, Inc.
Since the Cincinnati visit she’d kept in contact with Marika who was under the impression (to a degree, this was not unfounded) that Naomi Matheson was preparing a documentary film on women boxers in which D.D. Dunphy would be prominent.
Each woman believing herself shrewd in “keeping in contact” with the other.
Marika had no doubt that D.D. Dunphy would win the MBL title in February, in Cleveland. The “really big” title fight would be with a boxer named Ilse Kinder who was the WBA champion and a box-office draw—“They can’t ignore us then. They will have to make a TV deal.”
Adding, “This will be a major fight, probably in the summer. Atlantic City at least. Vegas is a long shot but a possibility.”
And, “You might end up making your film all about D.D. Dunphy, Naomi. ‘The First Great Woman Boxer’—‘The First Great American Woman Boxer’—some title like that.”
Difficult not to be caught up in such enthusiasm, such optimism for what’s-to-come, even in one who had grown cautious, if not apprehensive, of peering blithely into the future—as if one could peer into any future and not rather into a kind of distorting reflective surface mirroring one’s own anxious face.
Naomi heard herself say carefully: “That would be a possibility. Yes.”
Vehement and righteous Marika continued: “Jesus! The situation is, sportswriters are all men. You’d think that would be changed by now but essentially it isn’t. Sports photographers are all men. TV sports producers. They don’t give a shit for women boxers, and they don’t give a shit for our boxer because she isn’t ‘photogenic.’ Know what they say? ESPN has said? ‘Dunphy looks too much like an athlete—viewers won’t like that.’ Like, Mike Tyson doesn’t look like an ‘athlete’? What’s Dunphy supposed to look like, a ballet dancer? Ice-skater? Our boxer looks like who she is.”
THIS TIME, Naomi knew to come to the fights late. To avoid the grueling earlier fights, between inexperienced or lesser boxers, that aroused such scorn among the spectators scattered through the arena.
In the clamorous arena Naomi sat alone. Already her nerves were on edge amid such noise.
This time she didn’t feel so self-conscious. It had not been her aloneness after all in Cincinnati that had made her conspicuous but the color of her skin and here in the more attractive Cleveland Sports Arena, at least within the first dozen or so rows, the majority of spectators were white.
White-skinned, and a number of them women. Women in groups, in rows. Rowdy and funny. From comments Naomi had been overhearing these fight fans had come some distance to see “Icewoman” fight.
Siri Aya had defended her title two years before in Cleveland, in this venue, and was a three-to-one favorite tonight.
No one seemed to know much about D.D. Dunphy, or to care.
Naomi did not want to see Dunphy win this fight, and become a “champion.” Yet, she did not want to see Dunphy lose badly, or be injured. Online she’d watched several fights in which the elegantly poised, seemingly invincible “Icewoman” Aya had outboxed, outmaneuvered, outlasted her opponents. Aya’s ring record was eighteen wins, two losses. Dunphy’s record was nine wins, no losses, one draw.
Aya was twenty-nine years old and had been boxing for eleven years. She’d famously said in an interview that she would “never retire”—she’d have to be “carried out of the ring feet first.” In her hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she’d been trained in martial arts and kickboxing and had been an amateur champion in these sports as a young teenager. Her older brother had been a WBA heavyweight contender until he’d been convicted of domestic assault and incarcerated. Her only losses had come at the start of her career. She’d defended her MBL title several times. When she entered the Cleveland arena in a silky ivory-white robe, with an ebullient greeting to the crowd, cheers went up, and sustained applause. When D.D. Dunphy had entered a few minutes before there’d been sporadic applause that had quickly faded.
In the ring, the two women boxers could not have been more unlike. Aya’s ivory-white robe was embossed with icicle-lightning bolts and her boxing trunks and Spandex top were of the same showy fabric; her chic buzz-cut hair was bleached platinum-blond; on her slender muscled arms was a tattoo-lacework of ivory and gold. Aya was sleek, long-legged as an antelope, her arms seemed to glitter like scimitars. Her skin was a pale cocoa-color but her features were “Caucasian.” Everything about Dunphy was cruder—matt-black ring attire, spiky streaked hair, lurid tattoos on her biceps. Her skin was sallow. Her body was thick, muscled, graceless. On the back of her T-shirt was colorful advertising for a Dayton sports store, Naomi was embarrassed to see.
Siri Aya wore ivory-white shoes with gold tassels. D.D. Dunphy wore ungainly black shoes on feet large as hooves.
“Ladies and gentlemen, ten rounds of women’s welterweight boxing for the Midwest Boxing League title . . .”