Okay. Yes. I did have a lovely trip to London. And yes it ended with a fractured proximal humerus (top of the arm bone at the shoulder) so kind of depressed about that.
Out of sling now! So a giant yay for that. And it is coming along. And yes, a miserable sore throat and cough for a week plus but that’s on the mend as well. All of which means I am out of excuses in the body department so that means facing down the truth:
My heart hurts.
Hurts so much I cannot fathom it. Not like the itch in the middle of the back where one can find any number of implements-but in the in-between spaces where one’s stealth emotions live.
During Jed’s illness I had spoken about the need to pay my acceptance of emotions on account and made a big deal of it with my therapist at the time. How I wasn’t going to run up the bill and end up in credit hell. Not expend more than I could handle at the end of the month. And was I ever proud of that concept. I was in the pay as I go mode. Out in front. Managing sadness and anger and frustration and pain.
Well … it is coming on ten months since Jed died and I am barely able to float.
What was I thinking?
It’s one thing to be a caregiver and provide material needs and so on but there was also all that grief I never even thought about. The whole we were but no longer what we were. The buddy that wasn’t my partner anymore, but still was somewhere buried inside. And now it is compounded.
Grief times grief times grief.
Tears at Paris Baguette as I cruise by the raisin buns. Passing by the pairs of shoes still so neatly stacked in the bookcase shelves we haven’t emptied yet. The notion that I haven’t had a good screaming battle with my best pal in a long, long time. Or laughed and smiled so deeply that my heart fluttered.
I have heard my body. It has said slow down sunny baby and be where you are.
I acknowledge I am in a sea of pain. I like to think I can see bits of land and maybe even a bird or two carrying flowers.
It’s been a minute and maybe a minute more. Finding a path. A way forward. A clarity of reason and purpose.
And not to eschew politics and all the other swirling difficulties of our time and place in the world–but one does also need to be located in things outside of it all, even as one sets aside the time for a haircut and simple braids while nursing a fractured humerus bone.
The deeper things are something else again:
Negotiating grief. An arc of the lifetime spent with another. How to say goodbye to something one barely had the time to say hello to. How life intrudes on dreams, and love, and feeling the quickening pulse of a heart pierced with the elixir of possibilities. Of falling into a bed of leaves tickled with laughter and longing. Of nursing hurt and heat and sudden clarity on a sweltering summer’s day in a hotel pool on the coast of Turkey.
The jockeying for whose foot is on the outside as if every love affair is the pas de deux of a south paw fighting an orthodox opponent. The perfect alchemical combination of polarities. The Yin and Yang of it all. Puzzle pieces that fit with a longing that seems without end. Of how it can feel lost in the tunnel of experience. The day in and day out of it all.
I think I figured out that Jed actually died. It’s what comes after that has proven so elusive. Overcoming the guilt of survival. Of honoring who we were but needing to move a pace towards an unknown realm that lies beyond the horizon. My new arc of something. A surprise that sets my being alight with tingles of sensation.
I am still becoming. Still hurting and yet feeling a glimmer of a future tense. Having faith in it all, what with the minutes of daylight ticking forward towards warm breezes and the scents of Spring.
There are two huge fight nights on the horizon for women in boxing.
As I have long contended, the excellence of these fighters continues to herald a new era for the sweet science. The promotional aspects of the sport have undergone major twists since the first appearance of women in the 2012 London Games. The perseverance of the athletes, and their unwavering belief in themselves and the sport they love, continues to push boxing to accept them on their own terms. As a chronicler of their stories, I could not be prouder.
First up will be the Claressa Shields – Franchon Crews-Dezurn rematch, a fight years in the making and marking another milestone in their epic journey together since the amateurs. As they contest for the Undisputed Heavyweight Crown, they will be joined by no less than five other worthy women’s boxing bouts on the stacked Salita Promotions‘ card contesting at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, MI on February 22, 2026 on DAZN. The undercard will include a 10-round interim WBA Jr. Welterweight title battle between Sam Worthington (10-0) and the veteran Argentine fighter Edith Soledad Matthysse (20-16-1). Danielle Perkins (5-1-0) will also see a return to the ring against the Australian boxer Chei Kenneally (5-0) in a 10-round, WBA Light Heavyweight championship fight. Three other undercard bouts will round out the card: Shannel Butler vs. Danila Ramos in a featherweight 8-rounder, Savannah Tini vs. Vaida Masiokaite in a jr. welterweight 8-rounder, and Jasmine Hampton vs. Agustina Solange Vazquez, in a jr. flyweight 6-rounder.
Not to be outdone, Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) is continuing its claim as the home of women’s boxing with their first card in London. Set for April 5, 2026 in the newly renovated Olympia Arena, they are taking the UK by storm with a huge all women’s boxing card to be broadcast on Sky Sports (as of this writing, there is no information on who will broadcast in the USA).
The card is headlined by two unification battles. The first is an all British affair between the Olympian and current WBC light weight champion Caroline Dubois (12-0-1) and the three-division champion and current WBO light weight champion Terri Harper (16-2-2). The co-main features unified IBF, WBC, and WBO super bantam champion Ellie Scotney (UK) (11-0) versus the Mexican contender, Mayelli Flores Rosquero (13-1-1). The main card also features to other championship battles: Irma Garcia (Mex) (25-5-1) IBF super fly title holder vs. Emma Dolan (UK) (8-0). Chantelle Cameron (UK) (21-1) will also make a return to the ring contesting for the vacant WBO super welterweight title versus Michaela Kotaskova (CZ) (11-0-2).
MVP has also announced five preliminary bouts for the card (from the MVP press release, 2/20/2026).
Shannon “The Baby Face Assassin” Courtenay (10-3, 3 KOs) vs. Nottingham’s Sasha Booker (3-1) in an 8-round bout in the super flyweight division at 115lbs.
Elizabeth Oshoba (9-0, 5 KOs) will make her promotional debut vs. Hull, Yorkshire’s Chelsey Arnell (5-2-1) in a 6-round featherweight bout at 126lbs contested under equal rules, three-minute rounds.
Luton, Bedfordshire’s Tysie Gallagher (10-2) will also face Finland’s Teresa Makinen (5-0) in an 8-round super bantamweight bout at 122lbs.
Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire’s Gemma Richardson (2-0, 1 KO) vs. Czech boxer Johana Rochl (6-6-1, 2 KOs) in a 6-round lightweight bout at 135lbs.
Essex boxer Arjon Basi (2-0) will also join the preliminary card against to-be-named opponent.
We remember Dr. King for his unwavering fight for civil rights and justice. He was also a warrior in overcoming what he called the three evils: War, Racism, and Poverty.
As we face such struggles in our nation today, we must take heart that while we have setbacks that may seem insurmountable, the solidarity of the community gives us the strength to fight on. And through it all, it is important to remember that we can experience moments of joy.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1967 speech at the National Conference on New Politics in Chicago.
It has been a long time since I traveled alone without any particular itinerary. If I have a mandate at all for myself it is to slow down my pace and drift.
That has proven a tall order as I find myself encountering moments of unexpected grief coupled with the inclination to fill my days from end to end rather than allowing them to unfold. Still … I’ve been managing to find that sweet spot. The first, I think, on the ferry from the Roman port of Civitavecchia to Palermo.
Palermo, Sicily, coming into port, September, 2025
I had actually booked a stateroom for myself — a lovely little space with a window out to the sea. Having fallen asleep early, I woke up at around 3:00 AM. Making my way to the main area of the ferry, I passed by sleeping bodies in seats and on benches, before getting a cappuccinno from the lone barman. We chatted for a bit, before I took my coffee out to the deck. The sea, the warm air, the lightening from a distant thunderstorm embracing me in the moment. I felt myself become the breezes. The bits of spray from the water as the ship steadfastly made its way across the Tyrrhenian Sea. Felt for the first time in many months a feeling of peace and the beginnings of drift I’d come to Italy to find.
I’m coming to my third week soon. I’ve been to Rome, Palermo, Malta to visit my friends Jocelyn and Tom, the ferry to back to Sicily, although that was less than two hours versus the thirteen to Palermo. Still as a travel day it had its own magic, along with the taxi ride up to Ragusa Ibla.
Now in Ortigia, Sicily … having found a cafe with WIFI, quite the surprise I’ll add, my days have more and more of those moments. Those pieces of time where I am free within myself. Yes, going to museums and all of the other “supposed to sees” that one encounters, but I also have given myself the permission to do nothing. To have a pajama day. To start to unpeel the layers of a lifetime with Jed enough so that I do not cry every time a photo of him appears on my iPhone.
The Twin Towers in July 1983, with New Yorkers taking in the sun on the beach created by the WTC landfill. Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
This picture always gives me hope.
One finds beauty where one can. Creates a world of wonder where one can. Insists on the good in the world where one can.
New Yorkers have been engaged in that for 24 years.
We move forward – some of us still not able to walk the hallowed grounds. Some of us mourning deaths as recent as this year that are directly attributable. Experiencing grief and its attendant feelings of loss, especially when thinking about a loved one who breathed in the dust working the pile day after day … now suffering, or having transitioned on.
It’s what we can’t bring ourselves to think about that really hurts. The losses upon losses both personal and in the world at large.
We pray for peace and the grace of peace. And pray some more and more again. Until next year … when we again feel the stab and pang of how senseless it all has been.
Think to ourselves, may the memory of those who perished be for a blessing.
My senses are out of kilter as to time and place. I will think it is Tuesday when it is Monday. Saturday when it is Friday and vice-versus.
The house feels larger even with Izzi staying here. We rattle around. Marveling at how tall the ceilings seem. At how many people were able to fit comfortably in the living room when we sat Shiva on the Monday and Tuesday after Jed’s death.
With Jed at home, the rooms had always seemed balanced. His large frame occupying the space. Balancing out the height and width and breadth even in his last weeks lying in his hospital bed. His presence still filling the rooms with echos of his insouciant smiles or his coquettish turns in one or another doorway.
Jed standing tall was a marvel. His posture perfect but tinged with a languidness that harkened back to the Wyoming roots of his General father. And yet Jed was a true Easterner. Intelligent and smart and fast thinking from all his years spent in New York City. At home, on a sailboat or a kayak, climbing a mountain or walking the G-trails of Europe, or sitting at Puffy’s Bar, or writing one article or another for the New York Times, or sharing a pint of ice cream with Izzi. Talking politics or mycology or the origins of fire as the basis for the industrial revolution.
Frontotemporal Dementia robbed him of so much of that. Slowly. Insidiously. Painfully. As a horrible march down the rottenest of fetid paths lined with the scary monsters of childhood nightmares. Still, there were things he could hold onto. His three quick kisses to the air when one or another of us came into view.
The whispered, “I love you.”
The moment of sudden lucidity in his last week when he looked at Izzi and said, “I’ll be there.” For Izzi. For the milestones and triumphs in Izzi’s life to come. His fatherhood still there at the last.
The sway of his body as music played.
Jed still in there a little. Struggling to breathe. To live and release enough to pass on.
One of the privileges of life is to be there at the beginning and the end.
The miracle of my own pregnancy, delivery, and birth aside, my first experience of new life, was the birth of my dear friend Mara’s son Gabriel. He was born in the birthing center at what was then Roosevelt Hospital on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She’d been in labor for quite some time, when all of a sudden, imminent birth came upon us. In the ensuing haste, I became her stirrup, bolstering my body against her bent leg as she pushed. I had never felt such power or connectedness to the cycle of life, and still count it among the most extraordinary experiences of my life.
Standing watch for death is no less miraculous. One feels through the touch of the skin and the cast of the eye how the body begins to let go. Shutting itself down into a dream like state of near relaxation.
Sitting with Jed as he begins to transition is no less extraordinary even as I feel the pain of watching my partner in life transcend our plain of existence. I find the rapidity of change to be the most difficult to contend with–an infusion of painful awareness that shoots through my psyche like a bullet train until I am able to normalize again; experiencing the all to human need to construct reality around the unfathomable.
Izzi and I spent today hanging out with Jed. We watched Soprano’s episodes, played Bette Lavette albums, chatted away. Sat on our computers. Wandered in and out of his room. Fed him bits of pureed food and sips of water from a spoon.
We told stories.
Talked about the future and the trip we want to take together.
Anyone who has every cared for a bed bound person is familiar with the necessity to reposition their loved one every two hours. This is to avoid and/or is part of the treatment for bed sores.
Yesterday I used one such two hour interval for a manicure and pedicure. The self-care felt evident, but more so the chance to drift as a very kind young woman from Southern China, carefully washed my feet, scrubbed my heals, massaged my legs, and applied nail polish before repeating a similar process on my hands. I appreciated how she used a portable fan on my feet as she applied polish to my fingers–and used a portable fan for each hand in between her ministrations.
Meanwhile, it’s four weeks since hospice care began and I’m in a same-o, same-o frame of mind.
Up by 7:30 AM no matter what time I fell asleep the “night” before, to allow the home health aide “clock” in from my cell phone.
Gloves on and the work to give him a wash, change his shirt and his diaper, change the “chucks” – the absorbent disposable mats under his body – and every few days, the positioning pad and fabric mat. It usually takes about an hour. And then breakfast, pureed yogurt and fruit with a little nutritional yeast thrown in, or oatmeal and apple with a bit of smashed up walnuts and a couple of spoonfuls of maple syrup ’cause why not.
Meds are next. The ones that help Jed stay calm and out of pain–a new wrinkle now that he is bed bound: neck pain, stiff joints, where a turn without supporting his head mean agonizing moments until we right it.
Jed sleeping on his side, May 15, 2025
Then sleep. A two-hour check. Turn or change then turn. Then two more hours, and change, lunch: smashed avocado and cottage cheese, or an egg salad, or left over pureed mashed potatoes with spinach. More meds, time upright to digest and then turn.
Plus two-hours, and again, till dinner, and more meds, and then the four-hour turns. at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. Those are the hardest. I am tired. And not sleeping enough. And sometimes doing the 2:00 AM on my own because the workers don’t work overnight. When they can help they do, but one worker in particular informed me last week that she can’t do it anymore.
The 2:00 AM on my own has its own rhythm. The repositioning is the hardest, but I am beginning to get it right. I find that bathing him in the half light has a kind of soothing appeal. I take my time. Careful to wash off every last bit of Desitin and biological matter that clings to him. Once I am done. I sit for a while. Watch him drift in sleep. His mouth open, as he draws breath. His body otherwise still resting on a mountain of pillows and flannel PJ bottoms that we stuff strategically to ease his comfort.
Last week Izzi started to come to help. We bond even deeper as we minister to him. We fill his nights with our love. Lie in my bed afterward at 3:00 AM, unable to sleep, watching old Sopranos episodes.
I swore it was three weeks since I put my sweet man on hospice care.
Today, however, marks two actual weeks in spite of the tricks time is playing on my mind and heart. Two weeks, and he is sleeping more. Eating less. Drinking less. Weaker. And yesterday, despite everything we are doing, he was diagnosed with a grade 2 bed sore just below his coccyx.
Two nights before when we discovered it, and having taken a photograph forwarded it on to Jed’s hospice nurse, she wrote back quickly saying it was a bedsore. It was a horrifying moment. A crushing moment. A moment of recrimination deep into my soul: How did I not see it before? How can I cure it? Make it go away overnight with a huge schmear of Desitin?
The clinical classification of the wound during his nurse’s regular visit yesterday gave me the sense that Jed is truly on this journey. A moment to be etched onto my soul. Mostly sad. Resigned. And more sadness.
The realization that despite the best efforts of bathing and drying and keeping the skin lathered with this and that product, skin breaks down. That the body doesn’t heal as fast. That he is truly at the end of his life and no amount of wishing and hoping changes the course.
When I spent 10 days in a silent Buddhist mediation retreat years ago in Thailand, I was taught that all things have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The walking mediation practice seemed to exemplify that concept the best. One starts off walking with the goal of walking 30 paces or so before stopping, turning, and beginning again. I admit to anxiety and discomfort on my first forays. Would I be mindful enough to stop at my appointed place? Or, would my mind wander and thereby miss the ending, so entranced in the mind-movies we invent we lose track of ourselves in space and time?
After a while, I got it. I would walk, set myself some landmarks and starting out feel exhilarated. Towards the middle I could begin to feel that my goal was nearing, but that the place where I was had its own beauty, its own interest. At the end, I felt a sort of arrival. That my task was done and that I was ready to start it anew as I stopped, took in where I was, turned and set out again with a new vista and orientation towards the place at the edge of a field where I had chosen to walk.
Contemplating Jed’s journey, I feel the vistas for him. The morning light in his room as I open the curtains, and how it casts light at the edge of his bed. Our time of bathing and dressing him. Anointing him in creams to keep his skin protected from the this and that of the day. Preparing a pureed meal and then feeding it to him. Providing his meds crushed in applesauce or bananas and strawberries. Setting him in his bed. Turning him, and on throughout the day into evening. Watching him sleep. Whether it is me or Izzi or one of his lovely home health aides. Guarding him. As the journey of his life slows. Reconfigures towards what will be his inevitable turn…
The night I met Jed at Puffy’s Bar on Hudson Street, in Tribeca, the song, The Boy From New York City by the Ad Libs was playing. I hadn’t heard it in longer than I could remember, but walking into a bar that had such a great dancing beat to it had set my mood for the night and when Susan Dumois, the bartender, stepped out from behind the bar and started to dance with me, I knew the night was special.
In the blink of an eye, I sit in Jed’s room, Bach’s Suite No. 3 playing soothingly in the background as he sleeps, coughs, sleeps again.
We are at the end of his second week on Hospice.
I think I am located in it but perhaps not. I cry less. Feel less anxious, though if sleep is the measure, my anxiety comes through in the fitful hours of watching cat videos, and my new favorites the rescue beavers, Tulip, Stormy Rose, and the two tiny beaver kits, Blossom and Sprout.
I don’t write – except lists, and other easy stuff in my journal when I can take an hour to myself and sit somewhere.
Home hospice life with Jed, April 23, 2025
My sense of control comes from the stream of non-stop package deliveries of supplies for Jed. From the preparation of meals, adding Thickener, a product that literally thickens liquids to help a person with difficulty swallowing drink or eat their food. From shaving him with his electric razor careful to be gentle, and getting every hair I can find. From the notes I trade with his medical team.
What I have no control over is the relentless course of the disease. Of his sudden distress. Of his decline. Of his whispers. Of how my heart breaks from time to time.
I find the strength to face each day in the wee hours. And from dear, dear friends and family who send me their best wishes for which I will always be so, so very grateful.
My husband Jed and I met on a fateful night in December, 1996 at Puffy’s on Hudson Street in Tribeca, then sporting the best juke box in the City. We had one chance to meet and make something of it, and we took it. Fairly early on we discovered we shared a love of boxing. I had just taken a course at the local gym, and earlier had practiced on the heavy bag in the basement of my friend Eddie. Jed had just fought in his first “white collar” bout at Gleason’s Gym, and otherwise with his black belt firmly affixed, was teaching beginning karate at a Dojo in downtown Manhattan.
We’d watch Friday Night Fights on ESPN, regaling ourselves about Teddy Atlas’ commentary (who didn’t in those days). He was also my biggest booster when I trained at Gleason’s. And using his brilliant skills as a New York Times columnist and editor, went on to help me edit my first book, A History of Women’s Boxing.
Our affinity was the boxer’s heart we shared and our ability to push through our collective traumas to face our truths.
Jed’s always been there for me-through tough times, arguments big and small, differences and non-differences, and through the love that exudes through the pores of our being and into our shared joy, Izzi.
Jed, Brooklyn Heights, Fall 2021
Jed’s formal diagnosis with behavioral variant of Frontotemperal Dementia over seven years ago was a near on knockout blow-but Jed persevered as did I.
Round after terrible round of the disease we adjusted.
During the pandemic it became obvious the Jed was no longer able to be alone. I retired from working with the City to care for him and have continued ever since. In those days, he could still take a long walk or go to the store at the corner. And in my company, we’d retrace his former route through downtown Brooklyn: A walk up Cadman Plaza to Olde Fulton. Then a walk through Brooklyn Bridge Park before meandering our way home through the side streets of Brooklyn Heights.
Privit – Brooklyn Bridge Park, June 2021
Each June we’d walk through the rows of privit grasping it in our hands to keep the scent alive on our bodies.
We’d hold hands.
I’d give him some water – though he mostly refused.
He still walked a pace, but was beginning to slow by the Fall.
I started having companions for him in 2022. That allowed me a few hours of respite a couple of days a week and it was also still possible to run out in the morning to the supermarket because he still slept in. Our boxer’s heart keeping faith with one another-has he began to have medication to help with the symptoms and found it harder and harder to comprehend what was going on around him.
From then to now feels like a blur, but the now is a late round effort.
Jed and the care aides, April 13, 2025
This past Thursday was the last day that he walked-though he can still punch (and land some good shots that leave black and blue marks) when we turn him in his hospital bed in order to wash and clean him.
The Friday before that, he forgot how to swallow, but fought his was back to solid food.
Bed bound. Losing weight. Coughing. Endless sleeping.
Yet treated with kindness and love by wonderful women. That’s what I cling to as I take the decisions necessary to transition him to hospice care. Here at home. Among his books and enough camping gear to outfit a boy scout camp (a feature of FTD is obsessive spending!). Feeling the love of what home brings when Izzi sits besides him.
The journey of this illness is a terrible one. Yet the key has been keeping faith with our pas-de-deux. Our pact of love and faithfulness that saw us care so deeply for one another. To fight on the same team. Playing at doubles. Each of us having each other’s back. Literally.
Jed is 77. This all feels way, way, way too soon and yet he’s here. Still punching. Smiling between cursing us when he feels hurt by this or that turn. Still saying I love you and lighting up with the broadest of smiles when Izzi enters the room.
At a particularly harrowing pivot point in the history of the USA, we are in a time of sharp reliefs.
There have always been divisions from the inception of the nation, generally understood as the Federalist – State’s Rights divide. The Constitution, in the original sin of the nation’s founding, upheld the ultimate state’s rights issue by allowing for slavery to continue: a decision that continues to roil our understanding of justice and the rights of citizens and those who reside in our nation.
As Dr. King began his extraordinary crusade for Civil Rights, the nation had to face up to the deep divisions of racism, and in so doing spurred on the civil rights legislation that over a generation guaranteed rights for African Americans, women, LGBTQ+, Native Americans, immigrants, the disabled, and many other classes of people who were marginalized and overlooked.
And yet, here we are: Racist. Sexist. Anti-Gay. Anti-Trans. Banning books. Banning speech. Dismantling public education through anti-intellectualism and the removal of critical inquiry. And on, and on, as we face the disillusionment of the fourth estate and the celebration of corruption that is transactional oligarchy.
The legacy of Dr. King , however, remains.
His last speech in Memphis in support of the sanitation worker’s strike, known as the I’ve Been To The Mountaintop speech, given on the eve of his martyrdom, remains to instruct us.
May we all have the strength to leave our world better than we found it.
The vicissitudes of life create pathways of a present tense of existence.
One asks have I performed this or that task? Met the needed deadlines? Balanced all of the varying strands to ensure that I am reasonably on point in concert with the strains and stresses of any given day?
There are, however, those moments when free in mind and spirt I will walk along Brooklyn Bridge Park and in glancing up notice the sky. It is when I cannot help but gasp at the absence of my twin towers of memory.
They were the locating beacon points of the City I love. The edifices that always startled my imagination when I looked up to grasp their presence rising above the city scape.
And they always were a grand surprise. Whether shrouded in mist with the early glow of light on a rainy evening, or majestic as I would walk in and amongst them. Marveling at their symmetry and the quietude of the plaza where they stood so gracefully.
Their loss is also incalculable. So many lives snuffed out on the day they fell and in the succeeding years as first responders have succumbed to 9-11 illnesses.
But there is also the loss of how wars played out in their name leading to yet more death and destruction and a sense of existential threat and imbalance I would argue the USA has yet to recover from.
Were we to enable the symbol of symmetry again, we might, perhaps find ourselves. Understand that while we must defend, we must also have the balance of sure-footedness. That existential threat can be overcome by letting go of our attachment to fear of the unknown. That by embracing our past and our present, we can feel more confident in our future.
I still ache for the towers because they are my memory of place, not from some nostalgic sense, but for a sensibility that embraces the surprise and joy of seeing an old friend made new again. Their absence is also the symbol of a kind of anger and tactic of terror I eschew at every turn. Yes. I understand the politics of terror. It is out of a very old play book. What I have always hoped for and continue to strive for though is a world where such plays are no longer necessary. Perhaps I remain naive to think that such things can exist–but in my city of memory they do exist as two giant towers to the sun that bring light and a boundless sense of joy into being.
The Promise of Women’s Boxing: A Momentous New Era for the Sweet Science is the must-read book on the rise of elite women’s boxing.
On April 30th, 2022, the first boxing super-fight of the era, headlined by two women and fought at Madison Square Garden, lived up to its hype and then some. The two contestants fought the battle of their lives in front of a sold-out crowd and garnered 1.5 million views through online streaming. It was the culmination of a long, three-centuries arc of women’s boxing history, a history fraught with highs and lows but always imbued with the heart and passion of the women who fought.
In The Promise of Women’s Boxing: A Momentous New Era for the Sweet Science, Malissa Smith details the exciting period from the 2012 Olympics through the true “million-dollar baby” women’s super-fights of 2022 and beyond. Rich in content, the stories that emerge focus on boxing stars new and old, important battles, and the challenges women still face in boxing. Smith examines the development of the sport on a global basis, the transition of amateur boxers to the pros, the impact of online streamlining on the sport, the challenges boxing has faced from MMA, and the unprecedented gains women’s boxing has made in the era of the super-fight with extraordinary seven-figure opportunities for elite female stars.
Featuring the stories of women’s boxing icons Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, Savannah Marshall, and more, and with a foreword by two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time undisputed champion Claressa Shields, The Promise of Women’s Boxing offers unprecedented insight into the incredible growth of the sport and the women who have fought in and out of the ring to make it all possible.
Here’s what the boxing world has to say about Malissa Smith’s new book:
There is no one more knowledgeable about or dedicated to women’s boxing than Malissa Smith. Without bias, Malissa is able to translate her passion into words that satisfy an enthusiast while appealing to occasional fans. A must read for any diligent sports enthusiast. Jill Diamond, WBC co-chair of the Women’s Championships, WBC International Secretary, Global Chair WBC Cares
Malissa Smith is the ultimate chronicler of women’s boxing. Her new book details the last dozen years, during which fighters like Claressa Shields, Katie Taylor, and Amanda Serrano have not only evened the playing field, but at times outperformed their male counterparts. Steve Farhood, Showtime boxing analyst and former editor of The Ring magazine and 2017 Inductee, International Boxing Hall of Fame
Malissa Smith’s comprehensive analysis and understanding of this very important period in the evolution of women’s boxing makes for a terrific read. Lou DiBella, President, DiBella Entertainment, 2020 inductee to the International Boxing Hall of Fame
Malissa Smith has given readers a very accurate accounting of women’s boxing. From the Olympics to selling out Madison Square Garden, she has revisited the history I’m proud to be a part of. Christy Martin, retired boxing champion, 2020 inductee to the International Boxing Hall of Fame
Malissa’s grasp of, eloquence on, and in-depth research into the continued resistance of change to 3-minute rounds for women is equally fascinating and disheartening. A must read for anyone interested in gaining insight into women’s boxing. Alicia Ashley, retired boxing champion, 2023 inductee to the International Boxing Hall of Fame
Malissa Smith has written a compelling book on the progression of women’s boxing, showing us the grit, determination, and perseverance that took the sport from the first ever inclusion in the 2012 London Olympics to today’s era of mega-fights. Sue Fox, founder, Women’s Boxing Archive Network, International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame
For anyone who follows and enjoys women’s boxing—this is the perfect book for you. It’s not just history and facts; this book is also full of stories and in-depth examinations. Malissa Smith did a terrific job! Jackie Kallen, boxing manager, 2024 inductee to the International Boxing Hall of Fame
Malissa’s effort to document the journey of women’s boxing is nothing short of titanic. In a world where stories are told in spurts of 280 characters on social media, Malissa takes the time to delve into the struggles of every fighter, and she takes us along for a ride that is rich in both journalistic rigor and historical accuracy—with her gift for storytelling making it a pleasure to read. Diego Morilla, writer, editor, and moderator for the Women’s Ratings Panel, The Ring magazine
Malissa has captured the wonderful growth of women’s boxing in her book The Promise of Women’s Boxing. She highlights how quickly the women have become a major force in amateur and professional boxing. And in many cases, the women overshadow the men. Bruce Silverglade, owner of boxing’s world-famous Gleason’s Gym
Jill Diamond, WBC co-chair of the Women’s Championships, WBC International Secretary, Global Chair WBC Cares
Girlboxing 