Plague of Strength

“Her legacy remains one of a joyfully unique woman who lived as she wished to live without adhering to the social standards of the day.”

In 1891, a broad-shouldered, whiskey-chugging, cigar-smoking Long Island socialite named Gussie Freeman first entered the boxing ring to lump someone up. Known as the Slasher of the Ropewalks, Freeman was huge for the time, standing almost 6 feet tall and weighing in at a lean and mean 175 pounds, and her size allowed her to take on both male and female challengers with ease. To give you some perspective, that was considered massively tall and heavy even for a man of the era, as the average US senator around that time was 5’9.5″ without shoes on and were five pounds lighter than Stewart even if they were considered “heavy” for their height.

Freeman, though high-born, descended into the lowest rungs of the American social order to ply her trade, but she fit right in due to her contempt for social mores. Never one to let society dictate “proper” behavior for a lady, Freeman was one of the highest draws of the era, fighting both men and women in 4 ounce gloves that resembled modern MMA gloves. And as with every male boxer of the era, Freeman had a hell of a time controlling her weight, and by the end of her career was tipping the scales at a thoroughly robust 250 pounds, which she used to publicly beat the brakes off of men in the street if they offended her or shortchanged her in a mercantile exchange. In 1882, Freeman fought the acknowledged female champ of the time, Hattie Leslie, though the fight was declared a draw after it was broken up by the police. Boxing, called prize-fighting at the time because it was contested for a small prize (in this case a $25 purse), was still highly illegal at this time, and social outrage at chick fights made the outrage at male fights look like a Republican “denouncing” date rape. As such, no fighter of the day got their due, but Freeman less than others due to the fact that she never officially held the title.

After Leslie died of typhoid fever at the tragically young age of 25, Freeman fought the next-most regarded champion, Hattie Stewart, though she lost in spectacular fashion after apparently going berserk in the ring when her hair kept falling into her face. The fight, however, was apparently so brutal that the crowd nearly rioted in excitement. Thereafter, she opened a bar and began boxing immensely popular exhibitions against a portly male boxer named appropriately named Fatty Langtry. Langtry was long a vaudevillian, having married one of the hottest broads on the circuit two decades earlier, and the pudgy pair of pugilists made a great draw. Never one to assent to following social mores, Freeman lived out the remainder of her life as the whiskey-chugging, foul-mouthed, barroom brawler (but definitely not a whore, which was the common belief at the time and often correct) with whom no one in their right mind wanted to fuck with, and whom many non-high society women considered a beacon of sensibility in an otherwise nonsensical world of corsetry, anemia, breathlessness, and general misery.

Fatty and his French import of a wife, Lillie Langtry.

So there you have it- social mores are fucking stupid, especially when they pertain to illiterate men with hard PDWs and very limp dicks and their opinions about how women should live their lives. Ladies, the next time some fatass opens his yap – use your fist to close it. It’s not like any of those Pepe-Le Pew-loving nothings will ever put their hands up against a game opponent, and if they do it’s just a free pass to stab them in the fucking throat.

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