Jill Matthews, left, from New York, N.Y., takes a jab to the jaw from Anissa Zamarron from Austin, Texas, during their flyweight fight at the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, N.J., Saturday Jan. 10, 1998. More than 1,000 people turned out to watch the first all-women's card ever held in New Jersey. AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer

Rabbi's daughter-in-law fights as `Zion Lion'

Web posted January 12, 1998

Associated Press

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) -- Forget sugar and spice. Jill Matthews certainly did.

She's a hairdresser by day, a punk rock singer and professional boxer by night, a 5-foot-3 inch, 106-pound bundle of sinew and attitude who quit being a gymnast because it wasn't hostile enough.

``I'm the son my father never had,'' she said.

Matthews, 33, of New York City, is one of a new breed of women boxers whose fierce competitiveness and gender-bending athletic aspirations are raising eyebrows in the man's world of big-time boxing.

``It's a little freaky, yeah. But I'm a regular femme fatale,'' the junior flyweight said Saturday as she ran in place in her dressing room prior to a 10-round junior flyweight with Anissa Zamarron.

``The waiting's the worst part. When you get in the ring, it's like going on autopilot,'' she said.

Matthews does not spring from boxing's traditional roots. She is the daughter-in-law of a rabbi. Her husband is a Park Avenue lawyer, and she's not content to wait for him to come home from work.

She plays guitar and sings for a group called Times Square. She recently earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition from Hunter College after going to classes part-time -- for 15 years.

But it is boxing that gets her blood pumping. She runs four miles a day and boxes two hours a day, five days a week, usually against men.

Come fight nights, this Jewish woman -- dubbed ``Zion Lion'' -- piles her strawberry blonde hair into a ponytail and dons black-and-red trunks. She is 4-2-1 as a professional.

On Saturday, she battled to a fierce 10-round draw with Anissa Zamarron during the first all-women's boxing card held in Atlantic City.

After dominating the early rounds and bloodying Zamarron's nose, she appeared to tire. Urged on by a crowd that included her husband's lawyer co-workers, she was strong enough to finish -- and turn a cartwheel in the middle of the ring after the bell.

Two judges had the bout deadlocked. The other had Zamarron winning.

Matthews didn't mind. After icing her face in the dressing room, she returned to the arena and joined a group of fans -- six young men celebrating a seventh's bachelor party with a night at the fights.

She walked up into the bleachers, signed autographs and posed for pictures when one of them pulled out a disposable Kodak camera.

What would her parents think?

``My mother thinks it's OK,'' she says. ``My father thinks it's disgusting. He says `That's disgusting.' Then he says, `How'd you do last night?'''