Mama Mia, She’s One Tough Mom

Like any good Mother’s Day scene, this one features a mother dressed in lovely spring colors.

The bright violet around Mia St. John’s left eye sometimes offsets the vibrant red clotting at the base of her nose, which often complements the swollen, sporty pink ears.

Like any good Mother’s Day scene, this one also features touching moments with the children.

“Knock ‘em out, Mommy,” shouts little Julian.

“Hit her harder, Mommy,” shouts little Paris.

On Sunday, this country will celebrate every conceivable type of mom, from June Cleaver to Hillary Clinton, from housewife to businesswoman to foster mom to stepmom to surrogate mom. . . .

Then there is Mia St. John.

Ms. None of the Above.

She used to be a topless mom.

Now she is one tough mother.

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Don’t laugh.

Let’s see you try reading bedtime stories with a fat lip.

Better yet, you try giving those good-morning Eskimo kisses with a busted nose.

Or how about being the school’s only mommy who shows up on career day to teach the kindergartners how to throw a left jab?

“She is not like the other mommies, and I think some people at our children’s school look at her funny,” said Kristoff St. John, her ex-husband who is still a close friend. “But, you know, that is just Mia. She is just being herself. She has a dream, and she’s going for it.”

Don’t laugh, because what can we teach our children that is more important than that?

Some look at Calabasas’ Mia St. John, 31, as nothing more than an 126-pound sideshow. A boxer who should be a ring girl. The tabloid-decreed “Battling Bunny.”

This former Playboy model, who will try to remain unbeaten in her 11th professional fight Saturday in Las Vegas and on pay-per-view, enters the ring in tight pink clothing and makeup.

She doesn’t wear the crew cuts or scowls of some opponents. She doesn’t begin each postfight interview with a loud proclamation, but with a simple thank-you to her children.

She’s not on ESPN, she’s on Howard Stern. One of her boxing publicity photos shows her not in a bloody brawl, but a skimpy bikini.

When she was recently asked her pugilistic opinion of Oscar De La Hoya, she answered, “He’s gorgeous.”

Experts say she is not yet a great fighter. There is no doubt that, for now, promoter Bob Arum uses her more for her looks than her skill.

Although the bruises are real, and the chance of permanent damage is still so great she recently spent $500 on a special mouthpiece to protect her movie-star smile, she will agree she’s still learning.

But if you want a real brawl, try telling her she has not been a good mom in the process.

“She is very nurturing, very wise, always there for the children,” said Kristoff, a longtime star on “The Young and the Restless” who lives three streets away and shares custody. “I can’t think of a better situation for the children right now.”

In many ways, in fact, boxing is a knockout job for a mom.

You can’t beat the hours. St. John drops off Julian, 9, and Paris, 7, at school by 8:30 a.m. She trains all morning, and is finished by the time she picks them up in the early afternoon.

You can’t beat the travel, or lack of it. Only two of her fights have taken her farther than Phoenix or Las Vegas, meaning she spends most of her year at home.

And you can’t beat the money. St. John makes as much as $20,000 a fight, and can fight as few as five times a year.

“It’s a great job for being a mom,” she said. “It fits everything perfectly.”

But more than anything, she says, you can’t beat boxing’s message.

She says she fights, in part, to teach her children about overcoming society’s stereotypes about the powerlessness of women.

And she is willing to get her face pounded to help them learn.

“I feel a sense of power in the ring, something that I’ve not always felt in my life,” she said. “I want to show my children that all women can have that.”

The daughter of an abusive alcoholic father who moved his family from town to town, she said she felt that powerlessness daily.

She found some solace in karate, which she began when she was 6.

She found further solace at 12 when she watched “Rocky.”

“I loved what the movie stood for,” she said. “I wanted to be Rocky.”

At 15, after being harassed by another girl during a high school football game, she discovered she was Rocky. She punched the classmate in the nose. Blood everywhere.

“I knew then that I could fight,” she said.

When she was 18, she sought the ultimate solace by throwing her life in a truck and driving here from Boise, Idaho, to seek her fortune.

She began fighting here on the amateur taekwondo circuit. She financed it by spending four years modeling for Playboy, topless stuff, nothing in the magazine, mostly in calendars and shows.

But after the birth of her second child, she decided she wanted to do something a little more, well, serious.

She sent a resume and photo to promoter Don King. He called her the day he received it.

She announced to her friends that she was going to be boxer, and everyone chuckled.

“I was almost as blown away as anyone else,” said Kristoff. “I couldn’t fathom her really wanting to get into the ring and let somebody punch her for a living.”

She didn’t listen. She found a trainer, veteran Art Lovett of Chatsworth. When nobody would let them in gyms, they would work out in city parks.

“This is something I want to do, and I knew I could do it,” she said. “This was my chance to show people what I was all about.”

Rocky, right? Unfortunately and unwittingly, real life was too close to the script.

While sparring with St. John before her third fight in Tampa, Fla., Lovett began feeling dizzy in the ring, lay flat on the canvas to rest, and suffered a fatal heart attack.

She called home from the hospital, and wanted to quit. But before he’d died, as he lay in the ring, Lovett, 54, had given her one last order.

“I told him, ‘I will never fight without you,’ ” she said. “He said, ‘Yes, you will.’ ”

And so she does, continually surprising even those closest to her.

“At first, I didn’t think she had what it took, she was just a bunch of flailing arms,” Kristoff said. “But now I believe. She is not just another pretty face.”

Even if other staring moms, uncomfortable that she is different, aren’t buying it.

St. John has told disapproving women to shut up in the line at the coffee store, and been unafraid to glare back at those who are rude to her in the neighborhood.

The only response that matters to her, she says, is that of her children. Only Julian has seen her fight in person, and only once, but they watch every fight on pay-per-view with their father.

“Sometimes they say, ‘Mommy, why do you have to get hurt like that?’ ” she said. “But we talk about it a lot, and they are starting to understand what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.”

Like any good Mother’s Day scene, this one will end at home, Sunday night, mother and children curled up on a couch the day after her big fight, probably watching some PG-rated video about little girls and dogs and love.

“Mommy, does it hurt?” they will ask, hugging her tender ribs, touching her sore face.

“Not one bit,” she will say, hugging them back.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.