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 . . .”
In the first several seconds of the first round it seemed evident: Aya was the quicker, Dunphy the more forceful. Very likely, Dunphy was outmatched by her taller, leaner, more mature and more devious opponent who stymied her with a rapid jab, a succession of blows, a way of moving to the side as if in retreat yet not in retreat but aggressively, unexpectedly pushing forward—so that the stocky-bodied, stronger boxer was led to throw punches wildly, that missed their mark, or, striking her opponent, were but glancing blows.
Aya wasn’t letting Dunphy get inside. So long as she could not get inside the shorter-armed boxer was helpless.
Naomi saw too, Dunphy wasn’t consistently keeping up her left glove. She was distracted, off-stride. A kind of panic must have set in as soon as Dunphy realized that her ring style would not be effective against an opponent who could so easily slip her hard-thrown punches, and was so much lighter on her feet.
When the bell rang, Naomi realized that her back teeth ached; she’d been clenching her jaws tight.
Truly she did not want D.D. Dunphy to win this fight, she did not want the name Dunphy to triumph. Yet she could not help it, she dreaded seeing Dunphy hurt. She had scarcely been able to breathe during the three-minute round.
If Dunphy could lose the fight without being hurt, knocked out.
She tried to see the fight as an event. A spectacle. Why did it matter to her who won?—neither boxer meant anything to her. Her own life was not affected in any way.
So far as Marika knew, Naomi Matheson was a documentary filmmaker with the intention of interviewing women boxers. It could not matter to her which boxer won this fight for her subject was women boxers and this would include those who lost as rightfully as those who won.
The second round was more intense and more hard-fought than the first. Aya was pressing Dunphy, forcing her to step back, misstep. Strange that the antelope was fierce in aggression, quick and deft and pitiless; the steer plodding, stoic, blindly pressing forward, determined not to betray weakness. In the corner between rounds Dunphy’s trainer Ernie Beecher must have been giving her urgent instructions which she could not follow.
By mid-fight Dunphy was panting, red-faced, cuts opening above both eyes from her opponent’s blows. Yet she prevailed, shoulders hunched, trying to protect her face and head with her raised gloves. She could not get inside, she could only punch frantically at her opponent’s arms and gloves.
“Who is winning?”—Naomi asked fight fans behind her after the fifth round.
“You kidding? ‘Icewoman.’”
She felt a low mean thrill of satisfaction, hearing this. Of course, it had to be true. She was feeling Dunphy’s humiliation in her own gut.
And that ridiculous and demeaning advertising on the back of Dunphy’s T-shirt—Give up! Give up! You don’t have a chance.