On a Slow Weekend for Boxing, Female Fighters Ruled the Roost

Last weekend was a slow weekend for boxing unless one happens to be a fan of the distaff side of the sport. There were four world title fights involving women and more of the same is headed our way this coming weekend.

Granted, packaging many female match-ups as a world title fight is a travesty. Although the pool of female boxers is small, that hasn’t deterred the sanctioning bodies from selling their seal of approval whenever the opportunity presents itself. True, there have been many men’s “world title” fights unworthy of the insignia, but the ratio of title fights to non-title fights is far less and thus less irksome.

Having said that, two women who fought this past weekend – flyweight Gabriela Fundora and light flyweight Evelin Bermudez – probably belong on everyone’s female pound-per-pound list and a third fighter, featherweight Tiara Brown, looks poised to nudge her way there.

Brown-Gongora

In a match that fell completely under the radar screen — boxrec didn’t have the result up until two days after the fact — Brown won a lopsided decision over France’s Emma Gongora, capturing all 10 rounds on two of the scorecards. The match at Houston’s Bayou Events Center was Brown’s first defense of the WBC featherweight title she won with an upset of Skye Nicolson in Sydney, Australia.

Tiara Brown is 37 years old, but one wouldn’t characterize her as a late bloomer. Twelve years old when she took up boxing in Fort Myers, Florida, she was a long-time member of Team USA who participated in two Olympic trials.

Tiara Brown

It was a soft defense for Brown as Gongora, 10-3-1 heading in, had defeated only three opponents with winning records, but Brown, who advanced her record to 20-0 (11 KOs), seemingly keeps getting better, a common thread in female boxing where many of the best boxers peaked later than their male counterparts.

Fundora-Kubicki

Unified flyweight champion Gabriela “Sweet Poison” Fundora pushed her record to 17-0 (9 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Canada’s spunky but overmatched Alexas Kubicki (13-2) at Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, CA.

It’s rare in women’s boxing to find a legitimate contender or champion who has won more than half her fights by stoppage. The lanky Fundora has reed-thin arms but somehow packs a big punch. She has stopped five of her last six opponents. Those five opponents were collectively 85-5-2. At age 23, the Coachella-bred southpaw is styled the youngest undisputed champion in boxing history.

Bermudez-Bailey

Also on Saturday, Sept. 20, IBF/WBO light flyweight champion Evelin Bermudez blasted out Canada’s Sara Bailey at Ottawa in a fight that lasted only 107 seconds. Bermudez had Bailey on the canvas twice before the brief skirmish was halted.

A 28-year-old Argentine, Bermudez (22-2-1, 8 KOs) was appearing in her 14^th world title fight. Sara Bailey, a stablemate of lightweight contender Lucas Bahdi, was 6-0 heading in and had a stellar amateur career under her maiden name Sara Haghighat Joo.

Curry-Fox

Last Saturday’s action on the female front was prefaced by a women’s title fight the previous night on a Dmitriy Salita promotion at the Fox Theater in Detroit. The vacant WBC world middleweight title was at stake when Olivia Curry, a 35-year-old Chicagoan, squared off against Kaye Scott, age 41, from Sydney, Australia.

Notwithstanding Scott’s deep amateur background, to call this a title fight was a sham. The women had only 15 pro fights between them. However, kudos to the ladies who fought with great fervor in an action-packed fray that fittingly ended in a draw. Their entertaining bout salvaged the show headlined by a dreadful heavyweight match between unexceptional Brandon Moore and plumpy DeAndre Savage.

Looking Ahead

This coming Saturday, Sept. 27, the scene shifts to Montreal where the main event is a bout packaged for the IBF world minimumweight title between Montreal’s Kim Clavel (10-0-2, 3 KOs) and Argentina’s Sol Cudos (10-0-2, 3 KOs). This is Clavel’s first fight since signing with MVP Promotions, the company co-founded by Jake Paul. The title belongs to Cudos who acquired the vacant belt in her last start with a split decision over a fellow Argentine.

Although it shapes up as a rout, there is considerable interest in the 6-round co-feature, the fourth pro fight for Canadian middleweight Tamm Thibeault, a two-time Olympian. If we take Claressa Shields out of the equation (the self-proclaimed GWOAT has been adding to her collection of belts by campaigning in higher weight classes), the 28-year-old Thibeault just may be the most talented middleweight in the world at this moment. So says the well-respected boxing journalist Corey Erdman.

Thibeault has been training with prominent junior welterweight Chantelle Cameron at the Steel City Gym in Sheffield, England. Her opponent, Italy’s Cristina Mazzotta, Is 1-0.

The card also includes several other up-and-coming female fighters, none more intriguing than 21-year-old Costa Rican flyweight Naomy Valle (14-0, 9 KOs), the sister of former two-division title-holder Yokasta Valle.

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Many of the women we have cited have interesting back stories. Tiara Brown joined the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department after attending college on a cross country and track scholarship. Assigned to crime-plagued Ward 7, she was named the Department’s Officer of the Year for 2019 before returning to Fort Myers where she runs the boxing program for the Police Athletic League.

Tamm Thibeault, who has a college degree in linguistics and speaks several languages, aspires to a career as an urban planner, and Kim Clavel, 35, was the 2020 recipient of ESPN’s annual Pat Tillman Award for community service. When the Covid pandemic hit, Clavel took a hiatus from boxing to return to her roots as a nurse, working the graveyard shift as a replacement nurse caring for dementia patients in nursing homes.

These women won’t be defined by what they accomplish inside the ropes.

Fundora/Kubicki photo compliments of Golden Boy Promotions

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