Lilly Rodriguez, 59; martial arts champion helped open up kickboxing for women

Lilly Rodriguez, a pioneering female boxer and world kickboxing champion who helped establish kickboxing as a sport for women, has died. She was 59.

Rodriguez, who owned the Heart of Champions gym in Sylmar, died Jan. 13 at UCLA Medical Center of complications relating to an infection, her family said.

"She really changed martial arts for women," said Michael Matsuda, founder of the Martial Arts History Museum in Santa Clarita.

"She was one of the few women champions in the 1970s and one of a handful of pioneers who spurred women into full-contact karate," as kickboxing was originally known, he said.

Rodriguez won women's featherweight boxing and women's featherweight kickboxing titles in the 1970s, her family said.

She is the only female boxer in the California Boxing Hall of Fame and one of a handful of women in the Martial Arts History Museum's Hall of Fame.

"Nobody believed in us, or me, at first," Rodriguez told The Times in 2004. "They thought it would be 'foxy boxing.' But I didn't go in there wanting to show anything other than my skills in boxing."

On Nov. 16, 1979, she and William "Blinky" Rodriguez made history at the Forum in Inglewood as the first husband and wife to box on the same professional card, said Don Fraser, who promoted the fight.

"You have no idea the pressure she put on me," said Blinky Rodriguez, who also became a kickboxing champion. "She went out there and dazzled them."

They both won.

"Female boxing was just sort of starting in the 1970s, and she was one of the first to get into it -- and she was good at it," said Fraser, who is also president of the California Boxing Hall of Fame.

After retiring from competition in the early 1990s, Rodriguez started training other women, Matsuda said.

Fighting ran in her family. Her mother was a wrestler, known professionally as Crazy Linda. Her father, an amateur boxer, started teaching Rodriguez the sport when she was 6. One of her five brothers, Benny "the Jet" Urquidez, was an early kickboxing superstar.

For her first professional bout in the 1970s, Rodriguez stuffed quarters in her socks and her undergarments to make weight. She was 5-foot-1 and 125 pounds, and her opponent, "Lady Tiger," had 25 pounds on her. Rodriguez lost the fight on a decision but "won the hearts of all the fans that night," her husband said.