Boxer's Heart : How I Fell in Love with the Ring

by Sekules, Kate

• ISBN13: 9780375503955
• ISBN10: 0375503951
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Villard

Summary

"I fought to shake things up, to play with the world. If I--sometime bookworm, singer in a band, Londoner, magazine editor, fiction writer, hotel and restaurant critic, softball addict, Caucasian of mixed heritage, pony-mad child, expatriate--could become a convincing pugilist, then anything under the sun is possible." So says Kate Sekules, the author of this brilliantly candid memoir and first-ever guide to the world of women's boxing. The story of how an averagely talented athlete converted her visceral dislike of violence into a short but eventful career as a professional boxer makes irresistible reading for both fans and foes of what used to be "The Manly Art." After growing up in London during the seventies and eighties, Sekules hit New York in 1992 and quickly happened upon something she hadn't realized she was seeking. In the mirror-lined gyms of SoHo and later at Gleason's Gym--the famous training ground of world champion boxers--she found herself in the right place at the right time to participate in the birth of a movement and an astonishing new direction for women. Sekules explains the mysteries of this most mythologized of sports and introduces the reader to trainers and fighters both famous and obscure, both male and female. With razor-sharp insight, she dissects her conflicting feelings on approaching the prize-fighting ring, drawing the reader in every step of the way. Sekules's account unfolds with the pace and depth of a great novel, crammed with larger-than-life characters and piercing observations about matters that concern us all: the nature of masculinity and femininity; love and conflict in the ring and in relationships; trust, fear, pain, and the uses of aggression. Along the way, the author casts new light on the confused state of gender roles today, deals a death blow to issues of weight that have plagued women for decades, recounts the secret history of women in the ring, and delivers a primer on how to box--all in a fresh, conspiratorial, and highly entertaining voice. Any woman who has grappled with anger and trust, been nagged by insecurity at the gym, or wondered what it feels like to throw a punch will identify with this witty and honest author's experience. Any man who has imagined stepping into the ring, or been baffled by the mysteries of the female, will want to add this one-of-a-kind to his shelf of sports books. It is a remarkable literary debut--with a very big heart.

Author Biography

Kate Sekules was born in London and is currently the travel editor of Food & Wine magazine. She has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, New York, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Women's Sports and Fitness, and Travel & Leisure, and she is the author of seven guide books to London and New York. She lives in Brooklyn. Her e-mail address is [e-mail].

Table of Contents

Prefight	3	(11)
How Did I Get Here?	14	(14)
From A to B (Aerobics to Boxing)	28	(15)
Here We Are Now	43	(25)
Let Her Come Forward	68	(23)
The Punch That Counts	91	(19)
I Spar How You Spar	110	(20)
I Am a Contender	130	(21)
Fight Time	151	(24)
Big Belts	175	(24)
My Heart	199	(31)
Postfight	230	(7)
Acknowledgments	237

Excerpts

Chapter 1 : How Did I Get Here


When did you start boxing? I am asked. Depends, I say. Do you mean when I first threw a jab in the first aerobic boxing class at Crosby Street Studios where it all began-both women's boxing and my boxing-in New York? Or do you mean when Lonnie "Lightning" Smith got in the ring with me, and me oh-so-cool and thinking, Hey, I've got the boxing thing down, except Lonnie was water, and I could not land a finger? Or do you mean when I first sparred with a girl? Or when I first got hit so bad that it hurt, or when I saw the black dots in my eyes, or when my knees buckled, or when my nose broke, or when I was first afraid of what I had set in motion? Or do you mean when I first stepped through the ropes for money, or back when Stephan Johnson and Juan La Porte taught me my first footwork and I felt the hunger in my body to know this thing, to be this thing, an actual boxer?

It began in 1992. There were no women boxing in 1992. There had once been women boxers, but the world and I were not aware of them. Even the boxing community (I use the term approximately) barely bothered remembering Cat Davis or Marion "The Lady Tyger" Trimiar or Jackie "The Female Ali" Tonawanda (who was briefly the male Ali's bodyguard), or even, say, the Webber twins, Dora and Cora, even though the twins were still in the hermetic boxing community, and, it turned out, would fight again-and win-after turning forty. I had given not a moment's thought to the existence of female boxers, because I did not like boxing. When the Scorsese movie Raging Bull played on television, in about '85, I switched it off. I couldn't stomach the sound of the punches, not only in the ring but also in the apartment-the male-bull, the wife-victim, the violence ...

I dislike violence. Nevertheless, the first time ever I threw a punch, I was hooked. Nowadays, thousands and thousands of women who work out know how that feels, since the boxing class is a fixture on every city gym schedule. When she hears I box, a stranger usually counters with her own experience: "I took a boxing class at my gym," she might say. "I loved it! I hurt for days! And I run thirty miles a week." She usually has a friend who boxes, though doesn't spar, is hazy about the difference between kickboxing and the straight-up sort and probably changed her own allegiance to Tae-Bo in 1998. Yes, the concept of the aerobic boxing class long ago became pretty unsurprising, verging on dull, but the fact of women fighting for real has teetered on the edge of the mainstream since 1995.

That was the year the Golden Gloves-the principal amateur boxing competition in the United States-created the first female divisions. The Gloves is not the only route into the sport for men in this country, but it is the popular and sensible one. Success there wins a fighter a shot at the Nationals, and at international competition leading to the Olympics, or, for the impatient, better management for a professional debut. A woman boxer's path is less clear, and as polymorphic as the athletes themselves. Even now, with the sport having taken off to some extent, the 2004 Olympics may or may not sprout a distaff ring, and a Gloves entrant in, say, Portland, Oregon, may or may not find an opponent in her weight class, and could conceivably win a coveted pair of diamond-studded twenty-four-karat-gold-plated boxing gloves on a walkover. In other words, there are female Golden Gloves champions who have never fought. Even odder, there are professional female boxers who enter the ring without having fought-a reckless leap, like going straight from the bunny slopes to a ski-jumping competition. I am one of these.

Let's get clear from the start that this is no champ's "as told to" autobiography. My record is small. The story of how I acquired it is better. If I have cared too little for the fight itself and too much for dissecting how boxing makes me feel, how it changes and challenges me, and what my gender means in this context, I'm happy. I fought to shake things up, to play with the world. And if I-sometime bookworm, singer in a band, Londoner, magazine editor, fiction writer, travel and food critic, softball addict, caucasian of mixed race, pony-mad child, expatriate-could become a convincing pugilist, then anything under the sun is possible.

I wonder myself what set this obsession in motion. I suppose it's rooted in childhood, in growing up a tomboy; and it must have something to do with following a decidedly nonlinear career in which I rarely felt I quite fitted in the world. I have to assume I am playing with my damaged parts. If I had stopped, as the majority of women do, at training, I would not think that. Training to box is one of the toughest physical challenges you can set yourself, and it is clean. But once you step through the ropes, a dimension rears up that is not pure at all. To compete as a runner, a swimmer, a player of tennis, golf, basketball, football-any noncombat sport-what you do is an extension of what you did in training, only more intense; but to compete as a boxer, your aims are suddenly quite distinct from those of your training sessions. You hope to inflict so much pain on your opponents that they fall over and can't get up.

Nobody boxes who doesn't have to, goes the adage, but what does "have to" mean? I used to assume the obvious, that it's about fighting your way out of the ghetto, until I found that nothing was more alive for me than fighting my way with all my heart into one particular ghetto. I didn't have to box for the money, but I did "have to" box, and I'm not the only one. All the boxers who appear in these pages have to, and yet the best female boxers I know all had other fish to fry. Jill Matthews (12-1-2), holder of the unified featherweight belt, is a rabbi's daughter, hairdresser, and singer. She is a hyperkinetic motormouth who hammers out self-deprecating oneliners that Sandra Bernhardt would envy and claims to hate half the world, although everyone loves her. Veronica Simmons (22-00), the middleweight world amateur champion, is sleek, big, taciturn, and unfathomable-not unfriendly, not warm. She is a federal corrections officer and was an all-state college basketball champion. Lucia Rijker (14-0-0), often called the best female boxer in the world, is the charismatic life-and-soul anywhere she goes. You'd think her absolutely ego-driven, except that she's a devoted Buddhist. Rijker was already the world kickboxing champion, and now she's being courted for major Hollywood roles, like the lead in The Matrix, which she turned down because the filming would have coincided with her first world-title fight. These three-and I-have nothing in common except boxing, but there is an affinity nevertheless, a fellowship. I believe the common theme, the hunger to box, is hidden deep and can be located only by its owner. I believe the fuel for the fight derives not from what we have done, but from how we ourselves view what we have done, and from hidden things we can't talk about easily. I believe it is related to the drive found in all athletes but that it has a distinctive flavor, and that it may not be so different in a man, except that women share discrete areas of additional pressure in this culture. When I look into my own past and heart, I see clues that suggest how any woman might understand the need to fight.

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Excerpted from The Boxer's Heart: How I Fell in Love with the Ring by Kate Sekules
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