Women's boxing pioneer Christy Martin is putting her own money on the line in tonight's fight with Laila Ali.
By LAURA LEE
Published August 23, 2003
[Times photo: James Borchuck]
Christy Martin, 35, has considered retiring and having a child, but the opportunity to battle women's boxing's most glamorous figure was too appealing to pass up.
The odds were just too good.
Two weeks ago Caesars Palace had Christy Martin as the 6-1 underdog. It was a line she couldn't understand.
She was the one who put women's boxing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and inside Time after upstaging a Mike Tyson-Frank Bruno heavyweight fight in a bloody undercard battle against Deidre Gogarty. She was the one who'd been plugging away in the ring since 1989 trying to sustain a name for herself. She was the one handpicked by Don King, the first woman he signed. She was a legend.
Martin, who never has bet on herself, couldn't let this one go.
"I don't see any way I can lose," she said while sitting on the edge of the ring in her gym and training headquarters in Apopka. "I sent my man to Vegas."
Tonight the past of women's boxing meets the future. Christy Martin (45-2-2, 30 KOs) fights Laila Ali (15-0, 12 KOs) in an IBA super-middleweight championship match in Biloxi, Miss. Ali is 10 years younger, 6 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier and has a more famous father. Still, Martin has so much confidence, she put down a bet big enough that she'll take home six figures if the fight goes in her favor.
A year ago Martin, 35, was thinking about retirement. She won a ragged decision over Mia St. John in December and was frustrated with the promoters, who she says still haven't paid her the $305,000 she's owed. She and Jim, her husband and trainer, started thinking seriously about having a baby. But she wanted to fight Ali and had been trying to work out a deal since 2001. Martin was drawn to the super-middleweight champ just as many people are. She's charismatic, good-looking and has one of the most famous names in the world. Who wouldn't want a piece of that?
Where Martin once stood alone, other women have started to share the spotlight of mainstream women's boxing, and one person in particular has overtaken it: Ali. She may not be on the cover of SI, but she can be found inside the pages of Vogue and Elle, captured on film like a natural supermodel. She's in commercials selling hair products and Ford cars, and she signed a contract this week with adidas. Ali won't disclose how much she makes in endorsements, but she admits it has made her a millionaire.
Martin doesn't have any of that. A film crew from Hollywood tried to document her career after she became a cover girl in 1996, but a deal couldn't be worked out with King.
"That's not me," Martin said. "I'm just happy being laid-back."
In appearance, the women could not be more different. Martin easily could go unnoticed at a shopping mall or grocery store. But Ali, even if she weren't recognized from her feats in the ring, has had so many television appearances on talk shows and cameos on sitcoms her celebrity would be hard to miss.
"Christy Martin is at the end of her career," Ali said while training in Biloxi this week. "It would be great for her to say she beat Laila Ali.
"I have everything to lose. People already expect me to win. I need to win in a spectacular fashion. It needs to be a shutout."
Martin acknowledges all Ali's advantages, but she believes she can prevail within 10 rounds. If she doesn't, oh, well.
"I think my reputation is set," Martin said. "If I lose, okay, I wasn't supposed to win anyway. I just want to prove to her that I'm still the best."
The women have established they don't like each other. At a prefight news conference in mid June a shoving match broke out. It's widely suspected the "fight" was staged, but both assert it was real. Martin said Ali had been disrespecting and intimidating her all day. Ali said she wouldn't have staged an "embarrassing moment for women's boxing. It made us both look bad."
For either woman, there's no bigger name to fight, and the younger Ali is the hands-down favorite. The fight is being promoted with the question, "Who's the Greatest?"
Longtime trainer, manager and promoter Lou Duva said this fight's significance is that it features the top athletes in women's boxing.
"(Winning) is not going to make either one of them a legend," said Duva, who will attend the fight. "It's the way people accept them. In order to be a good legend, to be a good fighter, you have to beat all of the available contenders."
Ali predicts the fight won't last five rounds, but she knows this is the biggest fight she can get right now.
"She was the first, and it is significant," Ali said. "I'm not going to take that away from her."
King pushed Martin to the forefront after signing her in 1993. She went from making $600-$800 a fight to $5,000. He put her on big-name cards so she would get noticed. Her pink trunks and bloody nose became trademarks.
"Don created me that way," Martin said. "He kept me in front of the people. He kept me out there."
Before King, Martin got a fight where and when she could. She came up at a time when having an amateur career wasn't an option for women. Often her opponents weren't trained boxers but martial artists. She and Jim had to sell tickets to her fights and her dressing room often was the size of a janitor's closet. She considers that experience her amateur career.
There was a time Martin was happy paying her bills on time. Now she can afford a Cadillac Escalade and vanities such as her plastic pink sports watch with a diamond-encrusted face. Martin is at a point where she is taking only big-money fights. The most she has made was a $350,000 payout in a win over Kathy Collins in May 2001. Neither fighter is revealing the purse for this fight, but Martin said if pay-per-view sales don't come through, she could make less than the Collins fight. Perhaps that's why she placed the bet in Vegas and why retirement won't happen in the near future. She plans to hook up with King to close out her career.
"I feel strong. I feel like I'm really at my peak," Martin said. "No matter what happens, I want to fight again before the year is over."
Tonight will be Martin's 50th fight, 34 more than Ali, a statistic she hopes works in her favor. Her unimpressive showing, however, against St. John, who became famous posing in Playboy, was Martin's only fight in the past 22 months. Ali has won and defended three super-middleweight titles in that time.
"She's been busy. I haven't," Martin said. "They think I'm ready to be had."
