Marian “Tyger” Trimiar

Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar is a pioneer in Women's boxing. The 1979 World’s Women’s lightweight boxing champion, Trimiar was a vocal supporter of making the sport more accessible to women. She fought in countless exhibition matches before it was legal for women to fight in sanctioned bouts and was the first woman to apply for a license to box in New York State.^[1]

Lady Tyger started seriously training at 18, after graduating from Julia Richman High School in Manhattan. She said she has fought a total of 25 official fights, winning all but four with an "off and on" career over the past 12 years. In 1979, she won the Women’s World lightweight championship from Sue "KO" Carlson in San Antonio, Texas.

Lady Tyger was sure that women’s boxing was going to be very big in a couple of years and she vocalized that belief to all that who would listen.^[2] Little did she know or could have predicted that she would go through years of turmoil and disappointment in the sport of boxing.

A true pioneer of female boxing, in 1987, she carried on the cause to the extent of going on a well-publicized "hunger strike" for a month to advocate better money and conditions for professional female boxers, even though she was protesting for others and not herself.^[3][2]

Lady Tyger Trimiar was the first woman to apply for a boxing license in New York State.^[4] After a long drawn out lawsuit, Lady Tyger, Jackie Tonawanda, and Cathy "Cat" Davis were the first women to be issued a boxing license. They were side-by-side together at the same time to receive that license, even though Cat Davis, was physically "handed" her license first, they were actually all THREE issued a license at the same time. Because Cat Davis was handed her license first, she was pegged as the "First woman" to get her New York license, but in reality, Lady Tyger applied for her boxing license first with New York State, and technically should have received it first on that day.^[5] She even protested the fact that Cat Davis was handed her license first, and the whole ordeal had suspicious racial overtones to it.^[6]

Lady Tyger was truly one of the greatest female boxer in the 1970s and 1980s.

^[7][8] She fought exhibitions fights before it was legal to box in sanctioned bouts. She stayed in the fight game from 1973 until 1987, accumulating over 25 professional bouts. Her fame in the 1970s and 1980s reached the Smithsonian Institution, when one day she received a letter from them, requesting remnants from her boxing days.

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