IT’S ALMOST 20 years since the fight that never happened, but when you mention the name Lucia Rijker to Christy Martin, ‘The Coal Miner’s Daughter’ still feels a certain way about ‘The Dutch Destroyer’.
“My blood pressure still goes up,” says Martin, now 57 and nearly 13 years removed from her last fight, against Mia St John in 2012.
Rijker, also 57, last punched someone for pay in 2004. But what if someone somewhere showed up and offered the pair a boatload of money to lace up the gloves and settle their unfinished business once and for all?
“You know what?” says Martin. “I know she would pull out.”
She laughs, but she’s serious at the same time.
It’s that fighter’s instinct, that something in a boxer’s DNA that will never go away. And Martin may have more of it than most.
The same goes for Rijker, one of the most intense boxers to ever step into the ring, but the last time the topic of Christy Martin came up, when we spoke in 2020, she had different feelings about her fiercest rival.
“When you had a beef with another fighter of some sort, you actually have a really strong connection to that person,” she said then. “So, I have a very strong connection to Christy Martin, even though we never fought, because we spent so much time on each other in the time when we were active and even afterwards.
“It’s like having a relationship with a person and going through a divorce [laughs]. You’ll never forget them in your life – and that’s what I have with Christy Martin.
“At the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame induction [in 2014], I thanked her from the bottom of my heart, because she kept me going. There were so many fights cancelled and it was so slow in women’s boxing, but I stayed in the gym because I wanted that fight.
“So, that was my drive. And the older you get, the more respect you get for each other. We’re just human beings. And then you see behind the scenes and what people go through.”
There were no such kind feelings when both were active fighters in the ’90s and ’00s. In stark contrast to this Friday’s superfight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano – the third bout pitting Ireland’s finest against the hard-hitting Puerto Rican star – there was no respect (at least in public), when it came to Martin and Rijker. This made a great stylistic matchup between two of the best female fighters in the world an even more attractive proposition to fight fans, even those who had no use for women’s boxing.
And, apparently, both fighters wanted it, too.
Rijker, a world-class kickboxer, migrated to the Sweet Science in 1996 and immediately started mowing down opponents like she owned the place.
Trained by Freddie Roach, flawless technically, and the owner of potent punching power, Rijker soared out to a 12-0 record with 11 knockouts by the fall of 1998, and what fans there were of women’s boxing at that time wanted only one fight for Rijker.
Martin was 36-1-2 in the fall of 1998, and the undisputed face of the sport. The first and then only female boxer to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine, Martin was a staple on Don King undercards, exposing her to an audience that hadn’t really seen women’s boxing, at least not at Martin’s level.
A proud brawler with a lethal left hook, Martin fought with an attitude, and her goals in the sport weren’t to open doors for her peers, but to show that she could fight as well as – if not better than – a man.
“I think I crossed over in the ’90s because I just wanted to be a fighter,” Martin says. “I wasn’t like: ‘We are making this women’s boxing move.’ I felt that by boxing and putting on a good show, I was promoting women’s boxing. I just wanted people to walk away and say, ‘Wow, that was a good fight; she’s a good fighter.’ Not ‘she’s a good woman fighter’; ‘she’s a good fighter.’”
Martin was a good fighter. The consensus was that Rijker was better.
“I think the fans were intrigued by her stature,” says Martin. “She was very fit physically. The fans wanted to see the fight, and I was confident that I could beat her, so I wanted to show the fans that didn’t think I could beat her that they were wrong.”
Truth be told, Martin didn’t need to fight Rijker, who was the living embodiment of high risk, low reward at that point in time. Martin was the A-side, she had King in her corner and, while Rijker was well-known to diehard fans, those fans weren’t going to pay the bills, especially when Rijker was promoted by Bob Arum, who wasn’t exactly on buddy-buddy terms with King.
Regardless, talk between the two kept heating up, with Martin sending more than a few low blows in Rijker’s direction.
“She said she was not gonna fight me because I needed a gender test,” said Rijker in 2020. “And that was so offensive. I was gonna get back at her for that one.”
Not through the internet or the then-nonexistent medium of social media. Instead, Rijker was going to show up at a place where she knew Martin would be: an open workout at the LA Boxing Club before Martin’s March 2000 bout with Belinda Laracuente. To most who had only seen the humble and reserved Rijker, this was going to be a revelation.
“Yeah, I was crazy,” Rijker laughs, looking back now. “I had such pride. That’s why I went after Christy Martin. She insulted me.
“There was no one on this planet that could insult me without being confronted by me. That’s how I thought. I didn’t care how big you were. I remember my mom dated some crazy criminal at some point, and he accused us of something we didn’t do, and he threatened us. And I told my mom, ‘Okay, let him come.’ I didn’t fear him at all. He feared me. Why did he fear me? I was not a mobster or anything. But I was committed.
“If I said it, I was gonna be in your face about it. I was fearless.”
As Martin began her workout, Rijker stood in the back of the gym. A friend saw her and asked when her next fight was.
“In a few seconds,” Rijker deadpanned, and as Martin finished an interview, the Amsterdam native moved in.
“I cut her off, and then she sees it’s me and she goes ballistic and grabs my throat,” says Rijker. “Instantly, as she grabs my throat, I step back with a left hook and then I get jumped by 10 guys. It was insane. There was so much drama.”
“I have no idea what that woman is up to,” Martin said shortly after the incident.
“It showed a lack of class to walk up to someone at their open workout when they’re not even looking, and sucker-punch them. Come on, how much lower can you go?
“I’m not worried about fighting her. She hit me bare-fisted with me not looking. She had her plan. Next time, when we’re in the ring, I’m gonna know she’s coming, and we’re gonna both be ready to fight.
“I’m not worried about it, I want the fight. I’ve asked Don for two years to please get me this fight.”
It took a little longer than that, and it was Arum, looking to capitalise on Rijker’s appearance in the film Million Dollar Baby, who actually put together a fight entitled Million Dollar Lady for July 30, 2005, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Both fighters would get a $250,000 purse, with the winner getting an additional $750,000.
By this time, Martin was 37 and two years removed from a one-sided stoppage defeat at the hands of Laila Ali. Rijker, the same age, had not fought since May 2004, having meanwhile chosen instead to see what Hollywood had to offer her. This wasn’t a clash of prime warriors. Instead, it was a couple of fighters past their best, but at least at the same point in their careers.
“I was going to hit her, she was going to hit me,” says Martin. “So we were both going to be tested. And the thing about that fight was that we were the same size. It wasn’t like when I went up and fought Laila and she was, way bigger [laughs]. We were the same size, we were the same weight. We were both at a good position in our career. We may have already reached our peak, but we were both at an equal place in our career.”
But it never happened.
On July 20, 10 days before the fight, Rijker suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Rijker, 17-0, 14 KOs, never fought again. Martin stepped through the ropes eight more times, going 3-4-1 before retiring with a 49-7-3, 32 KOs, record. Both moved on and have lived successful lives after their active days in the ring were over, and the pair were inducted into both the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
So, as much as the fight was anticipated, neither fighter’s legacy was tarnished by its absence.
As for the reality that the 2005 fight never got rescheduled?
“I have no idea,” says Martin. “The week after she pulled out, I called her people and said, ‘Let’s put this together, and I don’t care if it’s a million-dollar payday, let’s just put the fight together. I want to show everybody that I’m the best’.
“I’m still waiting on the callback. So, here we are 20 years later and I’m still waiting on the callback.”
Martin is resigned to the fact that the only time she will ever see Rijker is at functions celebrating their accomplishments and those of their colleagues in women’s boxing.
She’s OK with that, and doesn’t put too much thought into the possibility that the sport might look quite different today had she and Rijker met in the ring a couple decades ago.
“I think women’s boxing was on the rise at that time,” says Martin.
“Don King had given me a great platform fighting under Mike Tyson on those huge shows, and it would’ve just helped elevate women’s boxing to a little higher level than it was at that time.
“But would it have done for women’s boxing what Taylor-Serrano did? Probably not.
“I would’ve knocked her [Rijker] out in the early rounds, and we wouldn’t have had a war. And then people wouldn’t think, ‘Oh, women can fight.’”
So, ‘The Coal Miner’s Daughter’ wins?
“Yeah, absolutely,” Martin insists. “She has no chin and she has no heart. That’s why the fight never happened. She didn’t know she could beat me. She thought she could, but she didn’t know that. Everybody else she fought, she knew she could beat; she just really had to show up.”
This time, we both laugh, knowing that we’re talking about a fight that will never happen like it’s taking place next week. But Martin is unapologetic.
“I’ve gotten a little older and a little softer, but she does still make my blood pressure go up,” she says. “It is cordial. We’re never going to go to dinner together, I’m pretty sure, and you’re not going to see us sitting across the table like you saw [Terence] Crawford and Canelo [Alvarez] last week. No, come on, man. We’re fighters.”
