(MAR 16) The day was March 16, 1996--10 years ago. The venue: MGM Hotel, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Christy Martin was fighting Deirdre Gogarty in a six-rounder on the undercard of a televised boxing card featuring Mike Tyson vs. Frank Bruno. The two stole the show!

Martin became an instant media star, being featured on many television features, and donned the front cover of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Martin won the bout in this toe-to-toe action, that made the Tyson fight a disappointing men’s heavyweight title bout. The Martin-Gogarty battle was seen in an estimated 30 million homes and in over 100 countries!

Gogarty, a skilled boxer, found holes in Martin's defense and bloodied Christy's nose but was unable to blunt the heavier boxer's attack. It was a boxer-slugger confrontation, with the slugger winning.
 

The image of the bloodied Martin battling to outpoint Gogarty (who recovered from a knockdown to make an exciting fight of it) brought more attention to women's boxing than any other single event before or since. It took the sight of a female boxer bleeding like a stuck pig while winning her fight that put our sport on the world's media radar in 1996!