At 4’ 11”, Barbara Buttrick was known as the “The Mighty Atom of the Ring” and "Battling Barbara." Buttrick was born in England in 1929, and at age 15, she spotted a story in the Sunday paper about Polly Burns, a female prizefighter in the early 1900s. Buttrick bought her first pair of boxing gloves and found a trainer in London where she worked as a shorthand typist by day and trained at night.
“I was small, but I was mean,” Buttrick told The Miami Herald in a 1998 interview.
Buttrick began her boxing career in 1948, touring Europe as a bantamweight in the boxing booths of carnivals before coming to North America in 1952. Also known as “Battling Barbara,” she fought professionally in Canada and the U.S. before moving to Dallas, TX in 1957.
By the time Buttrick arrived in Texas, she had fought over 1,000 bouts with men, as well as 18 professional women’s fights. It was then in San Antonio that Battling Barbara truly made history, winning a world title bout against Phyllis Kugler.
After moving to Miami Beach with her husband, she defeated Gloria Adams in what is believed to be the first female boxing match in Florida in 1959. She fought her last fight in 1960 while four months pregnant before retiring to raise her children and pivot careers to be a ringside photographer.
Buttrick was inducted into the International Boxing and Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1990, and she founded the Women’s International Boxing Federation in 1993. A stage play called “Mighty Atoms'' inspired by Buttrick’s life premiered in the UK in 2017.