Hello lovely people. Sorry I've been a bit quiet of late. I am working on new stories but progress is slow so tonight I'm posting a couple of old stories that I've polished up for publication. This first one is a real throwback, a story I first wrote almost 25 years ago. It tells a sad story of the end of a relationship and one of the most one sided fights in CLAWS history.
Born in Cape Town to Afrikaner parents in 1959, Leah Martins began her fighting career in Munich, where she was a student studying physical education, in the late 1970s. She boxed topless at Wolfgang Stillermann’s club alongside the likes of Gabi Marshall and Lena Strauss and enjoyed considerable success and popularity.
After graduating she moved to the UK where she began teaching aerobics classes at a number of locations in the south, including Robertson’s Gym, home to the Civil Ladies Amateur Wrestling Society or CLAWS as it is better known. Leah joined CLAWS as a wrestler in 1983 and rose quickly through the ranks to challenge reigning champion Jay Leonard. She lost that fight, her first defeat at CLAWS, and would not win the title until 1987.
Openly lesbian, Martins frequented a local gay bar, Gracelands, where she met 19-year-old agricultural student Sian Ryan in late 1984. The pair began a relationship and Leah also introduced Sian to CLAWS where she began wrestling in 1985.
Red headed English rose Christine Bennett was born in Uganda, the daughter of a diplomat, in 1962. She also joined claws as a wrestler in 1985. Christine, Leah and Sian fought each other regularly in the CLAWS league throughout the ‘naked years’ of the late 1980s. Despite being lovers, Leah and Sian could be guaranteed to put on an excellent fight display any time they were drawn together in the league.
When CLAWS introduced boxing in 1986, Martins was one of the first to sign up and enjoyed much success against opponents such as Jenny Black and Nancy Holder.
By the late 1980s Martins’ relationship with Ryan was over. Ryan had moved back north to work on her aunt’s farm and only came south for CLAWS league meetings. Eventually she left CLAWS completely in 1988 after a dispute between her and Maggie Robertson over the filming of a fight between Martins and Bennett. Ryan went on to form the NBFC with Evie Walker.
Meanwhile Martins had a succession of short-lived relationships before outing Bennett in the ring during a highly sexually charged cat fight in 1991. Bennett and Martins became lovers and also tag team partners, fighting the likes of Jay Marchant and Clare Forbes and Pauline Grainger and Ellen Shaw.
When Gabi Marshall took over Robertson’s gym and turned it into Marshall’s ladies’ health club Martins became a full-time employee, teaching aerobics, work out sessions and the emerging activity of boxercise to classes of women who included the likes of future CLAWS fighters Suzi Lomax and Lorraine Carter.
Martins and Bennett both wrestled in the CLAWS league during the 1990s but rarely fought each other. (It has been suggested that one or other of them may have occasionally thrown a fight to avoid being drawn against her partner.)
Martins also continued to box until Bennett expressed an interest in doing the same in 1998. Martins, at the age of 38, decided to step back from boxing and gave her a place in the league to Bennett. Despite being only three years younger than Martins, Bennett showed herself to be as competent of boxing as she had been at wrestling and quickly rose through the ranks to challenge for the title.
All seem to be well in the Martins/Bennett camp until one fateful evening in 1999 when Martins caught Bennett in the red corner dressing room enjoying the pleasures of young fighter Sonia Caxton. Bennett had been knocked out in her title bid against Suzi Lomax and Caxton, who was 23 to Bennett’s 36 and had also been knocked out that night, had been taking care of her when things got rather more involved than they should’ve done.
Martins flew into a rage, initially attacking Caxton and then turning on her partner and beating the already dazed and bruised Bennett into unconsciousness.
Martins never forgave Bennett for the indiscretion. She threw her out of apartment where they’d been living and refused to speak to, or even acknowledge, the woman she had shared a bed with for the previous eight years.
Both continue to fight at CLAWS and, when Bennett won the boxing title later in the year, Martins challenged her to a boxing match to settle what she called “unfinished business” between them. Bennett, by now living with Caxton, agreed to the match once she was no longer the league champion.
Christine successfully defended her boxing title four times so Leah had to wait over a year for her showdown. When the long-awaited fight finally took place what happened surprised everyone. Bennett had forfeited her match against Claire Roberts to fulfil her promise to Martins; this is a witness’s account of that match:
Round 1
The Bennett came out reluctantly and adopted a guard to protect her face and upper body as Martins began tentatively jabbing at her defences. Bennett simply failed to respond to these attacks, keeping her gloves raised defensively but offering no punches in return. For the next 3 minutes they moved around the ring, Leah pushing out punches and Christine dodging, deflecting or absorbing them, never once offering a blow in return. As the round wore on Leah found the target with more and more blows but, try as she might, she couldn’t break through Christine’s defences. By the end of the round Leah appeared to have given up all pretence of a guard of her own, simply following Christine around the ring and throwing punches at every opening she saw. At the bell a bruised but unbowed Christine simply wandered back to her corner, she hadn’t thrown a single punch so far.
Round 2
The round followed the same format as the previous one, Christine raised her guard and walked to the centre of the ring where she just allowed Leah to pummel her, not even trying to throw a punch back. Whether she felt she could simply tire her opponent out this way was not clear but it certainly wasn’t going down well with the crowd. Mumblings turned to boos and cries of “get on with it” and “come on Chris, hit her back”.
Mid-way through the round Leah eventually found her way inside Christine’s guard and delivered three sharp blows to the breasts causing the ex-champion to wince in pain before a hay-making right upper-cut blew the guard apart completely and connected with her jaw. Christine went down on her back but quickly rolled over and got to her feet as the count reached 6. Referee Jay Marchant insisted on continuing the count to 8 before allowing the fight to continue and Christine took advantage of the extra seconds, taking large gulps of air before resuming her guard as Leah came in again.
The fight resumed and for another 45 seconds continued in much the same pattern until Leah again found her way through the Christine’s defences. She landed a left-right combination to the jaw and Christine was down again. This time she rose more slowly, taking a full 9 count to come to her feet.
Finally, in the closing stages of the round, Christine began pushing out a few jabs of her own but they were half-hearted and failed to connect, Leah hardly seemed to notice them.
Round 3
Christine had taken quite a beating already but still hadn’t thrown a true punch. As she came out for the third round things didn’t look likely to change. Once again Leah came out fighting but Christine just raised her guard and covered up against Leah’s attack. She was clearly being worn down as more and more of Leah’s blows hit home but she still didn’t seem to want to fight back.
With just over two minutes of the round gone Leah seemed to finally tire with the game and delivered two hard rights to Christine’s mid-rift. Down came the guard revealing a shocked and pained face that was quickly struck with a left hook and a right upper cut. Christine’s head snapped back and she fell flat on her back. A slow handclap from the audience accompanied the inevitable 10 count. Christine had been defeated without throwing a single punch.
Despite Bennett’s sacrifice, Martins was unsatisfied - claiming that she had wanted to fight Bennett not simply punch her lights out. Bennett for her part felt she had done her duty and refused Martins' request for a rematch.
Both women continue to fight at CLAWS while continuing to avoid each other. Martins, now in her early 40s, was the oldest fighter in the CLAWS wrestling league when, in late 2001, she sustained serious injuries in the ring when a posting move went seriously wrong during a fight with Nikki Hertig. Fractures to her collarbone and ankle meant Martins’ fighting days were over and she never stepped back into the ring again. After convalescing in the UK, she returned to South Africa where she lives to this day.
After the incident, the CLAWS steering committee introduced a new rule requiring league fighters to retire when they reached 40 years of age. Perhaps ironically the first fighter to be affected by this rule was Bennett, who by this time had returned to wrestling as well as boxing. She retired at the age of 40 in 2002 as undefeated league wrestling champion.
In the years after her retirement from the CLAWS league Bennett took part in a number of exhibition fights, including boxing matches against Gabi Marshall and Lorraine Carter and wrestling matches against Jay Marchant and Clare Forbes.
in 2006 Bennett introduced a new fighter to CLAWS, 20-year-old Francesca Lopez from Spain, who she mentored and trained through a lengthy and successful league wrestling career. Many thought that Bennett and her protégé were lovers despite their age difference but it later transpired that Bennett was having an affair with Lopez’s mother, herself a veteran fighter. Bennett had met Sonia Lopez at La Cantina, the legendary bar in Andalucía, when she and Martins had gone there to fight in the late 1980s.
Bennett took part in the first CLAWS senior wrestling tournament in 2009 and won the title, knocking out Ellen Shaw in the final. She continued to fight in both the senior wrestling and boxing tournaments for several years. She never won the wrestling title again but she did win the boxing title, again knocking out Ellen Shaw, in 2015. Her last fight at CLAWS was against Lorraine Carter in the 2017 senior boxing tournament, which she lost.
At the end of 2017 Francesca and her lover, former CLAWS wrestler Chloe Collins, moved to Andalucia. Bennett went with them and married Sonia Lopez the following year on a joint civil partnership ceremony with Francesca and Chloe. Francesca and Chloe, now in their mid-thirties and with a daughter of their own, continue to fight occasionally at La Cantina and, in 2022 both Sonia and Christine fought Blake Mitchell and Peggy Brown in private matches.
