TURNABOUT

Gold wire-rimmed glasses fogged, the Los Angeles-based fashion editor for Latin America’s leading women’s magazine was fanning himself with his glossy four-color product.

“They called me this afternoon and told me to come out to this . . . place,” he said, swiping a hand through the smoke at the dingy interior of the Country Club in Reseda, where, on this night, a cutting-edge hipness was happening: an all-women’s boxing card.

“I came here expecting a fashion show, HA-HA, and it’s all these badly dressed people and these, these . . . women fighting.

“Don’t you love it?”

Who better than a fashion editor to judge what is in fashion? And by most measures, women’s boxing is in style--and demand--at the moment.

Consider:

* In a USA Network poll of boxing fans last year, more than 80% responded that they wanted to see more women’s boxing on television.

* A female boxer, Christy Martin, cracked the bastion of mainstream sports journalism, the coveted cover of Sports Illustrated.

* Two months ago, a fight on ABC’s Wide World of Sports became the first women’s boxing match on network television.

* Women continue to be scheduled on the undercards of title fights, and Martin is on the card of Saturday’s Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas.

* Women amateurs have been boxing in Golden Gloves competition since 1994, and this summer for the first time will compete for a national amateur championship.

Perhaps the truest test of the advancement and sophistication of women’s boxing is that the fledgling sport is plagued by the same delinquency prevalent in men’s boxing: an alphabet soup of governing bodies; rival promoters feuding and stealing fighters; boxers embellishing their backgrounds to make themselves more colorful; “star” fighters beginning to refer to themselves in third person.

With dull predictability, women’s boxing is following the cynical-but-successful marketing strategy that packages female athletes as possessing an irresistible combination of sex appeal and danger. It’s a familiar pitch that manages to diminish both the “product” and the consumer.

During the sport’s other small blip of attention in the mid-1980s, women boxers were billed as “Foxy Fighters” or set up in evenings of “Leather and Lace.” The ‘90s update to that was the recent Reseda event’s all-women’s fight card, hilariously named, “Lips of Rouge . . . Fists of Fury.”

Gina Guidi, a heavily tattooed welterweight titleholder who scored a first-round knockout earlier that evening, sat in the back of the club and surveyed the scene.

“Look around you,” she said. “To be quite honest with you, I know what’s selling here tonight. . . . I’ll get in the ring with a prettier woman and get booed. Figure it out.”

The fashion editor did, with one scan taking in the gaggle of bubbly young women sausaged into spangly Wonderbras and sparkling hot pants. They were assembled backstage, awaiting the moment when they would carry pieces of cardboard into the ring, indicating which round is upcoming.

The incongruous juxtaposition of these comely women with the night’s other performers occured to few. Fresh in mind is the story of a recent mixed boxing card in Salinas in which the promoters used female card modelers for the men’s bouts and a skittish, Speedo-attired man for the women’s bouts. The man lasted one round before he was driven from the ring, pelted with table-top projectiles.

In any endeavor, it pays to know your audience. Which raises the question, what is the appropriate demographic for women’s boxing?

“You’ve got the whole spectrum,” said Fredia “The Cheetah” Gibbs, whose not-yet-healed cut over her eye prevented her from fighting that night. “You’ve got fight fans who are skeptical but also curious. You’ve got women’s boxing fans. And, of course, you’ve got the guys who like mud wrestling and who are here hoping one of the women’s tops will pop off during the fight. They’re all here.”

*

Tenants of the strip mall in Hollywood were glancing nervously again at their upstairs neighbor--the Wild Card gym--and wincing at the horrifying sound leaking out the windows.

“I OWN YOU, YOU’RE MINE! ANYONE WANTS TO RENT THIS BOY, SEE ME.”

Former International Boxing Federation super-middleweight champion James Toney was bellowing at his rotund sparring partner while pawing like an irritated bear at the young man’s head.

This was the training home of Lucia Rijker, who many say is the best female boxer in the world. Rijker, a Dutch former world kick-boxing champion, was sparring with a male fighter and listening intently to instructions from her trainer, Freddie Roach.

In their way, the pair exemplify two easily identified patterns in women’s boxing: women coming into boxing from the martial arts and kick-boxing trained by once-skeptical men who come to respect and admire the women who prove their worth.

“I’ve gotten some flack from other guys,” said Roach, a former boxer who has trained six world champions. “They say, ‘Roach, why are you training a girl? It’s a man’s sport. It’s a disgrace.’ It [ticks] me off. They are very shallow. They should open up their eyes.”

Rijker is a self-assured, poised athlete and an excellent ambassador for women in boxing. She laughed at the commonly posed question--Should women be allowed to box?--understanding that asking of perission is unnecessary.

“I’m here, I work harder than anyone else in this gym,” Rijker said. “I’ve been a champion in another sport; I take this seriously and respect everyone here. That’s all I can do. That’s my part.”

If women’s boxing were more like men’s, Rijker would be pitted against Christy “The Coal Miners’ Daughter” Martin, boxing’s most famous woman. Martin’s story is well-documented: how she showed up at Jim Martin’s gym in Bristol, Tenn., with an entourage that included her mother and her tiny Pomeranian; how Jim Martin surveyed his future wife and arranged with one of his fighters to spar with the woman and break her ribs to teach her a lesson.

Christy Martin didn’t get her ribs broken. She married the trainer and became a highly skilled boxer.

“Offensively, she’s wonderful,” said Larry Merchant, boxing commentator for HBO Sports. “I watched her spar for several rounds with a young man. She almost never threw the wrong punch.”

The Movie-of-the-Week plot line makes Martin’s story irresistible, and her undeniable skill as a boxer helps. A match involving Martin gave women’s boxing its breakthrough.

Martin and Diedre Gogarty were paired on the undercard of the March 16, 1996, Tyson-Frank Bruno fight that featured a terrified Bruno getting knocked out in three rounds.

Fans in Las Vegas and watching on pay-per-view were disgusted with the lack of action in the Tyson fight but were captivated by the blood and end-to-end action in Martin’s fight. Martin won, stole the show and lent instant credibility to women’s boxing. The fight was seen by 1.1 million viewers--the second-most-watched boxing card in pay-per-view history.

A star, and a star’s temperament, were born.

Tyson and Bruno were paid $36 million; Martin and Gogarty were paid $18,000 in the Don King production. Martin began feuding with King, with whom she had signed a long-term contract. Jim Martin reportedly demanded $100,000 for Christy’s next fight and King refused. She has not fought since.

Martin’s feud with King led her to file a civil suit in April charging King with breach of contract and damages for lost wages.

In a move that showed adults can come to reasonable agreements where money is concerned, Martin has since re-signed with King.

A blockbuster bout--a Martin-Rijker fight--that many believe would catapult women’s boxing may be as much as a year away. Martin is represented by King and Rijker by rival promoter Bob Arum, and boxing’s time-consuming dance of negotiation must first take place before the fight is scheduled.

In the meantime, the women who fought in Reseda received $200 per round, a respectable payday for inexperienced young fighters.

“There’s got to be a reason promoters are paying these women. They are not doing this for altruistic reasons,” Merchant said. “I keep hearing there’s a huge demand. I don’t know if this will last or not. These women are explorers in space. We don’t know what they will find out there.”

*

The lobby of the L.A. Boxing Club downtown was papered with fliers from dentists offering discount rates. A sign of the times: The bulletin board also held an ad for the Pink Pussycat pro mouthpiece for $150, in your choice of flavors--mint, licorice and cinnamon.

There were subtle but persisten reminders that boxing, after all, can be a brutal, damaging sport. The specter of injury may prove to be the biggest impediment for women in boxing.

Emanuel Steward of the Kronk Gym in Detroit has said of women boxing, “I’m touchy about women getting hit in the head and face. A woman’s body shouldn’t be hit in the stomach. Women’s bodies are built to reproduce. I saw the Christy Martin fight. It was more brutal than the men’s fight. Women don’t box each other--they fight.”

Most agree that all but the most experienced female boxers are overly aggressive, throwing flurries of punches in each round. Trainers say this is a typical style for a young fighter who has not yet learned the more sophisticated techniques of self defense.

It’s the action in women’s fights that fans say they love. The women take the punches square on. Women don’t wear headgear and, just as men are required to wear cups to protect their genitals, women wear padding to protect their breasts.

With the talent pool so shallow in women’s boxing, and with fighters who have boxed only a dozen professional bouts counted as highly experienced, the sport has a problem with mismatches.

“When they get into the ring, we’re mystified. We don’t know their history,” said Marty Denkin, a referee who worked the first women’s bout in California a decade ago. “Gender doesn’t matter to me. When you get into the ring, you’re a fighter. I love this sport and I think there’s a place for everybody in it. But safety is an issue because these fighters have no backgrounds.”

The case of Katherine Dallam last year fueled the controversy. Dallam, a former kick-boxer, lost her professional boxing debut and appeared to suffer only a bloody nose.

However, she collapsed in her dressing room after the fight and was taken to a hospital, where she required brain surgery to repair a broken blood vessel. She is recovering, but still has some brain damage.

Amid calls to ban the sport for women, physicians say they are at no greater risk than men.

Dr. Robert Karns, Chairman of the Physicians Advisory Committee to the California Athletic Commission, responded to commonly held beliefs about women as fighters:

* Do women bleed more easily than men? “No.”

* Do women break their noses more easily than men? “No.”

* Are women more susceptible to brain damage from a blow than men? “No.”

“There simply isn’t any clinical evidence that women boxers are more at risk than men,” Karns said.

Boxer Bridgett Riley noted the implied double standard: Brain damage is acceptable in men but not in women.

“Broken noses, that’s nothing that can’t be fixed later on,” she said. “Oscar De La Hoya is a lot better-looking than many of my opponents, but I don’t see anyone concerned that he might mess up his face.”

Among the many difficulties and taboos that might dissuade a woman from taking up boxing, health concerns seem the least troublesome.

Lily Rodriguez, a former champion kick-boxer and boxer who trains Riley, said nothing will prevent a young athlete from doing the thing he or she loves. Proper training is the most effective safety device.

“These women are so good because they have so many obstacles,” Rodriguez said, surveying a gym with a handful of women fighters. “The guys give us a hard time. I tell the ladies, ‘Do this seriously, all eyes are on you.’ Until we show them we are serious, they won’t respect us.”

Riley, who works as a stuntwoman, doesn’t have the patience to wait for respect.

“I’m sure the guys look at me like I’m some kind of bimbo,” she said. “But I’m not asking for their respect--I’ll demand it. I’ll get right up in their face and tell them, ‘I’m not like some girls you’ve seen in here before.’

“People always ask, ‘Why do you fight?’ You know what? It’s my life. It’s what I want to do. It makes me happy. That’s enough for me.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Fight at a Glance

* What: Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson, for the WBA heavyweight championship.

* When: Saturday.

* Where: MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas.

* TV: Live on pay-per-view beginning at 6 p.m.