Cathy Davis vs. Mona Hayes – “The Fight Was a Very Bad Mismatch” by Margaret E. Walsh

Source:  Fighting Woman News – Volume #2, No. 6/Writer/Journalist – Margaret E. Walsh

On July 14th (1977), I went to Allentown, PA to see a boxing match between Cathy “Cat” Davis and Toni Lear.  Unfortunately, Lear was scratched by the Athletic Commission doctor because of an ear infection.  Mona Hayes was flown in from Walla Walla, Washington at the last minute to replace her.

This fight was a very bad mismatch.  To put someone of Hayes’ experience (5-0-1-questionable) into the ring with Davis (14-0-0-questionable) was guaranteeing a bad fight.  Mona Hayes had barely a day’s notice, had been taking a break from training, and spent the night on a plane to the East Coast.  Davis seems a competent, well-trained boxer, but Hayes has much less experience.  She was not moving well and did not seem very aggressive.  I would be very interested in seeing both of these women under different conditions when they could be matched against opponents at their level.

Cancelling the bout and rescheduling the Davis-Lear match might have hurt the promoter financially, but would have been better for women’s boxing in the long run.  The audience that was there knows good boxing matches and what they saw was not an interesting well-balanced match.  In comparison, the men’s bouts on the same card were much better because the fighters were well-matched.  And that, unfortunately, is the comparison that will be made.

Fighting Woman News spent half a day driving out to Allentown, about a hundred miles, to see the Davis-Hayes nonfight.  The fight itself was a total waste of time.  It looked like a rather timid and reluctant white belt sparring with a brown belt who was enjoying her role as sempai (senior) and rather pleased to show her superiority with so little effort.  The beginner had enough of being made a fool of, or at least feeling foolish, and pretending to be injured, i.e., knocked out.  There was no real fight and no knockout.  Neither woman landed any blow that could be called powerful by the most ardent supporter of women’s boxing.  No one who had seen even the poorest of Marion Bermudez’ matches, the one against Evelyn Perez in 1975 (FWN #1), would believe that Davis’ weak blows bruised Hayes much less iced her.

Outside of the fight itself, the trip was well worth the time and effort.  We met feminist filmmaker Jane Warrenbrand who is working on a women’s boxing film.  Her film is now the rough cut stage and will premier in December.  It is called “The New Contenders” and was partially financed by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts through CAPS.  In order to complete the film, Warrenbrand is following the fundraising route used by so many art institutions.  Her company, Champion Films, has created the Friends of Champion.

We also are glad we met Mona Hayes who is the calmest and most charming manure shoveller we ever met.  She carefully named all her opponents, dates and outcomes of the fights.  She talks about boxing with enthusiasm and what sounded like knowledge.  Cat Davis will claim to be unable to remember her fights.  At first one assumes that this is because they never occurred, but it now seems likely that they did occur but were probably all like this one and she would just like to pretend they never were.  The phrase”champion without a challenger” takes on a new meaning all of a sudden.

When Bermudez had no challenger she fought men.  She also fought some women who were not in her class, but they fought.

Mona Hayes, as much as we like her cannot box.  She plodded as though her shoes were full of lead and threw punches that wouldn’t have done in a a cockroach—if one of them had happened to land.

We also met Cathy Davis, sort of.  It is rather difficult to make the acquaintance of someone who speaks in press releases.

She never set foot outside her room without her manager, trainer, consort Sal Algieri.  He is a man in his forties who has never apparently recovered from the shock of finding a young woman who both loves him and boxes.  Algieri is a former fighter with a less than spectacular record.  Right now he thinks he’s Pygmalion, or just Pyg, and is absolutely ridiculous to put it politely.  Davis is an athlete as is proved by her Louisiana state fencing title.  She looks as though she really knows how to box.  But it takes more than a media image and a paper organizations’s rating (the Women’s Boxing Federation consists of Algieri and some old buddies who allow the use of their names so far as we can find out) to make a champion.

At 135 Davis is too big for Bermudez but we can think of a number of karate women who could, in our humble editoria opinion., massacre Davis.  There have been some less then brilliant matches; there have been some mis-matches, but there has never, to our knowledge, been a non-match between women in karate.  Martial artists have pride if nothing else!

As the crowd filed out from the fights an older man said, “it just goes to show you, Boxing is a man’s game.” He’s right.  Women’s boxing is a man’s game, and that’s the problem.