In Love With Confrontation

The first things that hit you when you walk into Hollywood’s WildCard Boxing Club are the sweat and the noise. Men with rock-hard bodies ooze testosterone, pounding bags, grunting, groaning, spitting. Almost daily, noses get broken, eyes get blackened, blood gets spit and splattered. This is a real boxing gym. There’s no aerobics room, no stair-climbers, no yoga, no juice bar and, until a few years ago, no women. But that’s changing. A little. Women’s boxing gained worldwide attention when Laila Ali (daughter of Muhammad Ali) fought Jacqui Frazier-Lyde (daughter of Joe Frazier) earlier this year. Even before that, though, a few women were entering the ring, and some remain addicted to boxing.

Mostly, they like to fight. Many have been hit as kids or have been in fights all their lives and they’ve rejected the traditional female response of being passive or recoiling after being struck. Not only do they hit back, they also hit first.

A female boxer can become a champion of sorts, but a champion of what? There is an array of sanctioning organizations that offer women a title or a belt. Women’s boxing is not an Olympic sport, so there are no medals to be won there, either. As far as money goes--there isn’t any. Laila Ali, the top name in boxing, got a fraction of the millions Oscar De La Hoya gets paid for a fight. Says Tom Eaton, a former amateur boxer who follows the female boxing industry: “If there are 3,000 female professional boxers out there, four are making money, and the other 2,996 are in a fantasy that they can make money, or are being lied to by promoters, or they just don’t care.”

Freddie Roach, a former junior lightweight boxer, owner of the WildCard and trainer of Lucia Rijker, a boxer and the world champion kickboxer, argues that women who box are more vicious, tough and dedicated than the men. “Girls are meaner than men when they fight,” Roach says. “Like in a catfight, they give 110%.”

Eaton agrees. “They enjoy the sight of blood and are far more competitive than the men.” What follows are profiles of three women who jumped at the chance to jump into the ring.

Rita Valentini “Until I started boxing, I never knew what I wanted to get up in the morning for,” says Rita Valentini, a 30-year-old former native of Edmonton, Canada. She knew what she didn’t want. Forget school. Once an honor student at the University of Alberta, she dropped out after two years. Forget soccer. Two years on the university team left her bored. Forget marriage. Five years in a stifling marriage left a bad taste in her mouth. (There was, for instance, the time during a fight with her husband that she hit him in the face and on the body until he called the police.) Forget jail. The short stint she served that time for domestic violence was enough for her.

But jail didn’t stop her fighting. After another domestic altercation, friends brought her into a boxing ring hoping to teach her a lesson. “I knew I liked getting into confrontations, getting into fistfights. It was exciting when I knew it was going to happen. My friends used to tell me it was sick and I was instigating it. But I thought, ‘You can fight for a living? Wow!’ ”

Five years ago, Valentini moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles--broke and with no direction and about to get divorced. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to live anymore.” She took on various jobs, none lasting more than a few weeks, and various relationships that often ended up in fisticuffs. Boxing changed that.

Since Valentini has committed herself to becoming a champ, she has been trouble-free. Still an amateur, with a 4-1 record, she works out six times a week at the gym and runs five days a week. To pay for her small studio apartment in Hollywood, she works full time at a local pizza place. She’s been there for about six months, the longest she’s ever held a job.

“I’m only doing this to be a champion,” she says. “I like to get my hands on somebody. It’s so satisfying. It feels like everything in your body moves to that one point, then there’s no strain or effort. You see the other person weaken and cringe, and there’s relief in that. There’s justice in boxing. There’s been no justice in my life.”

The 5-foot-6, 122-pound Valentini says she faced discrimination in Canada, where she grew up the youngest of three children and the only daughter of Italian immigrants. Her clothes were too nice, her food too weird, her language odd. (Though born in Canada, her first language is Italian.) Her father, a welder, was old school about corporal punishment and hit her when she was bad, which was often. Her mother, a homemaker, was generous with the rod as well. “Canada is very white bread, and teachers didn’t consider us white,” she says. “I would get into fights and my dad would take me home from school, and on the way home he would ask, ‘Did you at least give it to him?’ ”

Being a boxer has given her a serenity she never before experienced. “When I’m in the ring, I look the woman right in the eye and I think, right at that moment, ‘She lost.’ At that moment, it’s almost like you see their soul.”

Sosadea Razo Clouds swallow the sun, leaving the makeshift boxing ring at the Del Mar racetrack windy and cold. Sosadea Razo’s tightly knotted French braid blows out of place as she paces nervously in her corner. The 5-foot-2 pugilist lost her first professional match to a bigger woman and is hoping her opponent’s four-inch advantage, longer reach and greater experience today won’t stop her on the road to becoming the first Native American female boxing champion. The 127-pound Razo, who is Pomo Indian with a smattering of Mexican and Hawaiian ancestry, had been searching for the past few years. She quit high school, then attempted junior college, but left that too. Stay-home motherhood wasn’t her thing either, so she shares care of her 3-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, with her husband, a Chicano studies and history major at UCLA who works part time.

“I’ve always liked to hit people,” she says. “I was definitely a fighting kid. I only used to beat up on someone with a smart mouth. Men, women, whatever. I felt they would get something good out of getting their mouth slapped. I liked to fight on the street and put on a show.”

Razo, 23, got her early training slapping around her brothers and her cousins in what she considers “traditional Indian style” on the reservation in Northern California where she grew up. She also saw her mother use her fists. “My mom was a tough Indian, too. I’ve seen her fighting growing up. I come from a family of women who fight.”

Razo’s entire family shows up in Del Mar to support her against her opponent, Michelle Vidales. Neither boxer has extraordinary skill, but they go at each other hard and strong. The two trade blows--spit, snot and blood flying. “This is fun, I’m having a good time,” Razo says between rounds, “When I hit her, I feel great. Nothing else matters.”

Razo is able to train full time without having to work. Her income is supplemented by a quarterly stipend paid to her by the casino her tribe owns in Northern California. That helps cover her rent and provides her and her family with health coverage. That is why, she says, it is so important to her to be a champion for her tribe. “I feel like I could do something for the Native American people. Show them my success.”

Razo loses the Del Mar fight on a split decision, her second professional loss. She has yet to win. But she remains upbeat. “I know I can do better,” she says. “I’m going to get stronger. I’m going to train even harder. Once I start winning, I know I’m going to be the best. It’s going to be perfect.”

Cynthia Prouder When the call came into the gym that female boxers were needed as extras in a Nike commercial, Cynthia Prouder figured she’d give it a shot. The featherweight fighter, whose record was 5-9-1, had been training full time so she could achieve the goal she’s been pursuing since she started boxing seriously in 1997, “to raise that belt high over my head, a champion, and be on the record books.”

A professional actress was initially hired to play the boxer, but when Prouder let loose on the bag, the casting directors were awed. They gave the job to Prouder. Soon after the commercial began running on national TV, she quit a job as a sales representative for Frito-Lay and went back to training full time.

Prouder was was born in Columbus, Miss., came to L.A. when she was 6 and was raised by a single mother in Culver City. Her mother put her and an older brother, Alvin, in a karate class to keep them off the streets and away from drugs and the gangs.

“Look at kids, little girls fight all the time,” says the 38-year-old Prouder one day after a training session, dressed in a miniskirt and blouse that show off her muscles. “It’s just society that changes them.”

It didn’t change her. As the adoring little sister, she followed her brother. When he became an international karate champion, she won her title. Their next step was his and hers kickboxing championships. He was just starting to win boxing titles 16 years ago when he was shot on the streets of Culver City. “They didn’t think he was going to make it,” she says. “They wrote him off and said if he did live, he would be a vegetable.”

Slowly Alvin healed, and he and Prouder opened a martial arts and boxing studio at Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue, where he teaches karate, boxing and kickboxing and she teaches karate, boxing, kickboxing and aerobics. “After the injuries, he came back, but not quite on the same level. I want to win a title for him, too. He motivates me to go for my dreams.”

Motivation is what Prouder needs at this stage of her boxing career. A losing record and advanced age aren’t usually the stuff of champions in any sport. She is being trained, managed and inspired by Eric Brown, a former boxer and kickboxer from Detroit. He also serves as a ballast when she gets ribbing from friends and her 16-year-old daughter, She-ra, a cheerleader at Dorsey High School. “My daughter always asks me why I can’t be like a normal mommy,” Prouder says. “I just tell her boxing is what I love.”