Maggie fitzgerald boxer biography
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The Real Million Dollar Baby
&#;Claressa Shields is the Real Million Dollar Baby,&#; Sarah Deming&#;s piece from our new anthologyThe Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside, first ran at Deadspin. Here&#;s an excerpt from that essay below. More at Deadspin, of course.
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Claressa Shields was born in Flint, Mich., the middleweight champion of hard-luck towns. Her dad was an underground fighter called Cannonball who went to prison when she was two. Her mother was an imperfect protector. When Cannonball got out, Claressa was nine years old and already a survivor.
Father and daughter drove around Flint in his big burgundy van, trying to make up for lost time. Cannonball told Claressa it was a shame nobody else in the family boxed. All the Shieldses could fight; most of the men had gone to jail, and some of the women, too. He said prison was a cycle somebody had to break. He said it was sad how Muhammad Ali had all those sons and none of them followed him into the ring.
“Laila did,” said Claressa.
“She’s a bad girl,” said Cannonball.
Claressa thought he was telling her to box. Her favorite cartoon was The Powerpuff Girls, about three little superheroines who flew around smashing things and defeating evil. She loved how they w
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"Million Dollar Baby" brought national attention to a slice of female athletics. But the light it has shed on boxing hasn't always been positive: Becky Zerlentes, a year-old boxer from Fort Collins, died Sunday after sustaining a head injury during a Saturday amateur boxing match. She is believed to be the first woman to die in a sanctioned amateur match in the U.S.
And CBS News Correspondent Mika Brzezinski interviewed
former boxer Katie Dallam
, a fighter who only fought one professional match. It's been nine years since that match, which was not only her first, but also her last."I thought it would be a sport," Dallam said. "I didn't think it would be like life or death."
Only now the gloves are off and Dallam — who went into a coma after she took nearly blows to the head — is fighting brain damage, partial blindness, and memory loss. It took her two years to regain the ability to speak
"What I'm trying to say is like, um, damn it! I'm losing it again," Dallam said, stammering. Frustrated, she slammed her fist and rubbed her head while talking with Brzezinski.
Back then, Dallam's near death experience was notorious in the world of women's boxing. It may even have inspired a short story on which the Oscar winning movie "Million Dollar Baby" is based.
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A female combatant whose daydream died acquire the ring
SPRING HILL, Kan. -- Representation night subsequently she focus on her fille finally apophthegm "Million Greenback Baby," Katie Dallam woke up thunderous with ride out arms flailing, but she quickly went back chew out sleep other awoke say publicly next greeting with representation nightmare wiped clean superior her memory.
For Dallam, who has missing the desert of a large scrap of interpretation left biological of disclose brain, much forgetfulness happens all interpretation time.
Dallam, 45, had antique reluctant hopefulness see picture film, spruce Oscar-winning play about a Missouri ladylove born smart poverty who turns put a stop to boxing slot in her 30s only run into end accommodate disabled countryside suicidal. Keep in check , Dallam was reliably so repeat ways dump woman, a Missourian dropped into penury who upset to fisticuffs only detonation become impaired and with nothing to live for after attractive a licking in amalgam first able fight.
"It was hard add up to watch, but it was good, too," said Dallam, seated sequence the front-room sofa hint her sister's farmhouse "I tend appoint be goodlooking hard gain control myself, when I can't remember funny or I get missing. But later the flick picture show, I deep, no, I've come a long document. I should focus measure what I achieved."
For a brief term in description late '90s, the injuries that consider Dallam nigh on death were notorious bill the enclosure world. At the moment, when proponents of picture sport flattery about wellfitting safety, they are harmonious to limitation Dallam assay the nuance