Boxing Trivia: Female Boxing Expert to Try for $64,000 Knockout – Oxnard Press Courier, California

When first coming across an article dated December 3, 1955, Page 5 of the Oxnard Press Courier, in Oxnard, California, the title of this article was “Female Boxing Expert to Try for $64,000 Knockout.  But they were not talking about a person that was an “expert” in Female Boxing, but a tad bit of boxing trivia about this era and how they felt about females even knowing anything about the sport.

The article is actually about Dr. Joyce Brothers, who had won $32,000 the previous Tuesday night on the CBS Television program “The $64,000 Question.”  Dr. Brothers was going for the big pot and that she planned to go for the jackpot with her knowledge of boxing.

As stated in the article:  “Dr. Brothers of New York saw for the first time a championshipboxing match Wednesday night between Carmen Basillo and challenger Tony De Marco Along with her husband.

Dr. Brothers was quoted as saying, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t divulge it,” I made no promises to anyone that I would wait until I got on the program.”

In an article dated October 27, 1957, they reported that Dr. Joyce Brothers won the contest TWICE:  Quote from that article: ” Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers put her boxing trivia to the test and came away with $64,000 on October 27, 1957. Brothers, who was appearing on the game show The $64,000 Challenge,  took the top prize, competing against a team of seven boxers on boxing lore. This was her second time winning the program’s top prize—two years  earlier she had claimed her first victory (when the show was called The $64,000 Question), also on the subject of boxing.”

As quoted in the hollywoodreporter.com “Dr. Brothers shot to fame in 1955 when she spent seven weeks on the air to win the popular TV game show The $64,000 Question  as an expert on boxing (she was the second overall winner and the first  woman to win). The housewife didn’t know anything about the sport, but  her husband was a fan, and she studied the Encyclopedia of Boxing after the sponsors suggested it as her.”

She was an amazing woman, outside the ring……Who would have thought?

Dr. Joyce Brothers passed away at the age of 85, in May of 2013.

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