(APR 20) When I saw Laura
Serrano's retirement announcement, in an
open letter to
WBAN, I recalled a long-ago line from a boxing lifer in New
Orleans. I was doing time on the "States Item" in that old city
and we were propped up at the bar in a joint on Canal Street,
one of those places that had "We Never Close" block
letter painted in the front window. He was discoursing
about a guy named Ralph Dupas, a tough-as-barbed-wire
fighter out of the Irish Channel neighborhood, a long standing
breeding ground for good professional fighters in the Crescent
City. The line, which I remember to this day, was, a
reverential, "Ralph Dupas, man, he did boxing..." a
high-praise tribute that left one word unsaid and a line used
sparingly about only the most admired of fighters. It's a line
that fits comfortably into any discussion of Laura Serrano and
her departure from the sport of Women's boxing,
"Laura Serrano, she did boxing, right."
Laura Serrano ended her career exactly the way she began, coming
out of a corner, in a professional boxing ring, to face a tough
opponent. In a career that spanned 13 years and 23 bouts along
with a take-your-pick list of spectacular highlights, that one
fact may be what makes singular Serrano's tenure near the top of
the sport of Women's boxing. Her debut fight was against a boxer
whose record, at the time, was 21-1-1. Serrano was an unknown
fighter from Mexico, her opponent was Christy Martin.
The bout ended in a six round draw.
Serrano's final opponent, more than 13 years later, had an 18-0
record and Laura Serrano traveled to Germany, Ina Menzer's
home country, to drop a close ten round decision. Stop and
think for a moment and realize those two bouts, separated by
13 years, crystallize what Laura
Serrano's career in the ring was all about: taking tough,
competitive bouts, literally, from the beginning to the end,
coupled with a willingness to go where the tough fighters and
the competitive bouts were.
"Laura Serrano, she did boxing, right."
And just as significant as what Laura Serrano's career in the
ring was, in equal measure, it was what her career was not that
was just as impressive, maybe even more so. Serrano's 13 years
as a professional fighter were never about the constant pursuit
of "look-at-me" publicity; there was no ongoing flow of press
releases detailing, at mind numbing length, grievances, real and
imagined. Her career was never about unseemly "call outs"
of opponents or the disparagement of other fighters or
the complaining about the up and down vagaries of the sport.
Neither was Serrano's career about an accumulation
of title belts, which, as the years passed, were rendered
essentially obsolete by the sheer, obscene number of titles
available. Serrano held two titles, over her 13 years, the WIBF
and IWBF lightweight titles. For a fighter who achieved
near stratospheric heights in the ring, Serrano, amazingly,
remained "under the radar" as far as publicity was concerned.
(It's an attribute that seems to have followed her into
retirement. Serrano did not respond to a request to contribute
to this article.)
"Laura Serrano, she did boxing, right."
Even now, Serrano's debut bout, in 1994, is the stuff of
Hollywood. To put it into proper perspective, one needs only to
recall that there, quite simply, has never been
anything comparable, since, now or maybe, forever, to the role
that Christy Martin played in the sport of Women's boxing at
that time. She wasn't the "face of the sport," she was the arms,
legs and torso of the sport; a heavy fisted knockout juggernaut
with an 18 bout winning streak, including 13 stoppages, most of
them in early rounds. Laura Serrano was Sir Edmund Hillary,
starting a career with Mount Everest. In the view of ringsiders
in Las Vegas that May evening, underneath Julio Chavez/Frankie
Randall, Serrano was, merely, "the next woman in line" for
Martin. After twelve minutes of bell-to-bell, back and forth
action, Serrano "won" 57-57 on all three cards. She "won," quite
simply, because the idea that any female boxer, much less a
debuting fighter, could stay on even terms for six rounds with
Christy Martin, in 1994, was incomprehensible. Eleven months
later, back in Las Vegas, for her second pro bout, Serrano
unleashed a devastating body attack to stop
Dierdre
Gogarty in the seventh round of a ten round bout for the
WIBF title. Gogarty's six round decision loss to Christy Martin,
the following year, would put Martin on the cover of Sports
Illustrated. Gogarty didn't fight Serrano again. Neither did
Christy Martin. Instead, Serrano embarked, over eight years, on
a 14 fight unbeaten skein (a draw with Melissa Del Valle the
only non winning bout) against such names as
Layla McCarter,
Cynthia Prouder, Kelsey Jeffries,
Jo Jo Wyman, Alicia Ashley,
Chevelle Hallback
and
Tracy Byrd.
"Laura Serrano, she did boxing right"
That boxing lifer, in New Orleans, never saw Laura
Serrano; a ten count tolled for him long before 1994. I'm fairly
sure his initial reaction to Serrano would have been something
along the line of "skirts and boxing don't mix." But he liked
Ralph Dupas, and, I'm pretty sure, given ample opportunity, he
would have come to like Laura Serrano. Because he liked fighters
who "did boxing......." and Laura Serrano "did boxing......" She
did it as "right" as it was possible to do it, from Las Vegas to
Germany and all those stops and all those tough fights
and all those
fighters in between. In her letter
to Sue Fox, Serrano offers her "help and advice" for those,
still in the sport. I hope she gets some "takers." She will, if
there are enough female fighters out there interested in "doing
boxing....," doing it right; if not, too bad for them, too bad
for the sport.
