By Lyle Fitzsimmons
Chevelle Hallback doesn’t have time for irritation.
The 39-year-old Floridian pays bills with a state job, spends spare hours as a student and fills in sleepless gaps with still-dogged pursuit of a goal to be the first woman featured in a bout on HBO.
So when it comes to big-talking prospective foes, she cuts right to the chase.
And in the case of returning female icon Christy Martin, the chase is officially on.
“The only way it doesn’t happen is if she doesn’t want to fight,” Hallback said. “I’m going to keep talking and keep making noise and keep showing up until they decide, ‘OK, the people simply have to see it.’”
For as long as it lasts, her hounding will be anything but friendly.
The venom is out of character for the normally engaging Hallback, who insists her antipathy for Martin, 42, stems from an altercation between the two at a recent amateur show in Orlando.
She said the incident began when, upon arriving for the card with one of his other fighters, Hallback’s trainer Sherman Henson was quickly accosted by Martin and told to tell Hallback to “keep her fucking mouth shut” when it came to issuing challenges to her fellow Florida resident.
Martin had recently made appearances on both news and sports pages, announcing an in-ring comeback after she escaped death following a shooting and stabbing allegedly inflicted by her husband at their Apopka, Fla. home when she reportedly disclosed a lesbian affair and planned to end the marriage.
Hallback immediately expressed a renewed interest in meeting Martin – who’ll seek the 50th win of her career on March 12 in Las Vegas – should she decide to continue fighting beyond the scheduled appearance on the Cotto-Mayorga undercard at the MGM Grand.
The challenge, Hallback claimed, is what prompted Martin’s outburst toward Henson.
“Sherman called me and said she went right up to him 15 seconds after he walked in the door,” Hallback said. “He told me what she said about keeping my mouth shut and right away I asked ‘Where is she?’ and I got in my car and drove to Orlando.
“I got to the show and I was talking to a lady and (Christy) looked up and saw me and made a gesture across her throat like she was going to chop my head off, and she started telling me he didn’t need me.
“After she finished, I did the respectful thing and told her I always wanted to fight her, and that if she was going to talk like that today then I was going to be there for her to keep talking about and that I wasn’t going away. She was going to have to fight me or retire.”
Hallback said Martin began screaming and the two were eventually separated, leaving her with a lingering desire to book the next meeting between the two in a more formal setting.
She said she plans to be quite noticeable in and around Martin’s upcoming match with Dakota Stone, including attending the weigh-in, the fight and the follow-up news conference, with the hope of convincing promoter Bob Arum – who added Martin to the Cotto-Mayorga show – that a fight between Hallback and Martin would also make sense from a business standpoint.
“I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain,” Hallback said. “I don’t really think she wants to do it, but Bob Arum is a businessman. And if he thinks enough people want to see the fight and if enough people are making noise about the fight, he’ll want to put on that fight. He won’t want to put on fights with people that are just going to lay down for her. No one’s going to care about that.”
Martin, a West Virginia native, rose to prominence in the 1990s and fought at venues including Madison Square Garden, Caesars Palace and the Pontiac Silverdome with the nickname “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Three losses in four fights between 2003-06 – including a KO by Laila Ali – ended Martin’s run and prompted a stretch of inactivity that’s seen her fight just four times since, and not at all since 2009.
Hallback, meanwhile, has 37 fights since turning pro in 1997 and has held title belts from myriad female sanctioning bodies in the featherweight, super featherweight and lightweight divisions.
She lost a 10-round decision for the WIBA light welterweight title to Holly Holm – considered by many to be the sport’s best woman – on March 26, 2010, in Albuquerque, N.M.
“If (Martin) hadn’t said anything, I probably wouldn’t have chased this so hard,” said Hallback, who’ll add gym owner to her resume when her Fists of Steel Boxing Academy opens later this spring in Tampa. “That’s when it crossed the line. I mean, if you’re going to make yourself seem like the big, bad wolf you’d better be prepared to do something, because you can’t just say anything to me.
“She knows now that I’m not going to go away. I won’t quit this until she retires.”
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This week’s title-fight schedule:
SATURDAY
Vacant IBF junior welterweight title – Newark, N.J.
Kaizer Mabuza (No. 1 contender) vs. Zab Judah (No. 2 contender)
Mabuza (23-6-3, 14 KO): First title fight; Second fight in United States (1-0, 1 KO)
Judah (40-6, 27 KO): Ten wins in 16 title fights; Ex-champ at 140 (IBF, WBO) and 147 (IBF, WBA, WBC)
Fitzbitz says: “Judah’s 140-pound renaissance continues in New Jersey.” Judah by decision
Vacant WBC super welterweight title – Anaheim, Calif.
Saul Alvarez (No. 1 contender) vs. Matthew Hatton (unranked)
Alvarez (35-0-1, 26 KO): First title fight; Fifth fight in United States (4-0, 3 KO)
Hatton (41-4-2, 16 KO): Second title fight (0-0-1, 0 KO); Four-fight win streak (4-0, 2 KO)
Fitzbitz says: “Hatton in over his head, even against a 20-year-old.” Alvarez in 10
Last week’s picks: 2-0
Overall picks record: 180-59 (75.3 percent)
Lyle Fitzsimmons has covered professional boxing since 1995 and written a weekly column for Boxing Scene since 2008. He is a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/fitzbitz .