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Dispatches From the Golden Gloves

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How To Knock a Girl Out

Posted Monday, March 4, 2002, at 12:49 PM ET

Nan Mooney is an amateur boxer fighting in her first Golden Gloves tournament. She's also the author of My Racing Heart: The Passionate World of Thoroughbreds and the Track.

My first book comes out in a month and a half, a sports memoir about thoroughbred horse racing. I've been working on it for three years. Am I nervous? Hell, no. I have far more important things to worry about. In two days I'm going to step into a ring opposite some woman I've never met and, for six minutes, do my best to knock the crap out of her. While she's doing her best to knock the crap out of me. I'm fighting in the Golden Gloves, the oldest amateur boxing competition in the country. I've never fought before. A year and a half ago, I'd never even thrown a punch.

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Sunday is my one official day off. I don't do anything, not even a push-up. Which leaves plenty of time for nerves. My goal today is to try not to obsess about the fight. I'm going to do laundry, run errands. There's nothing I can do at this point. It's not like I'm going to revamp my entire technique, what there is of it, in the next 48 hours. I just have to eat well, sleep, and try not to psyche myself out. That last one may prove tricky.

The fact that I'm fighting in two days seems so surreal that I'm practically calm. I've told almost no one this is happening. The last thing I need is my friends out in the audience yelping every time I take a big punch. I spent two and a half hours yesterday with the acupuncturist, trying to clear up a chest virus I've been carrying around for over a month. I have red bruises all over my chest and back from being cupped. It looks like I've broken out in some lavish sort of rash. My fears about the Golden Gloves all seem to have consolidated themselves into a single question: Will I be able to breathe?

I started training as a boxer last January—just walked into Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn and signed up. If you know anything at all about boxing, you've heard of Gleason's. It's the oldest fight gym in the United States, 65 years and counting, home to the likes of Roberto Duran, Larry Holmes, and a current stable of pros. When I decided I wanted to learn to box, I opted for the real thing. I didn't want aerobics or tae-bo or kick-boxing. I wanted sweat and grit and blood and bruises. They've got it all at Gleason's.

I didn't start fighting out of a repressed need to kill someone—I go to therapy to deal with that. In fact, boxing is far more sport than violence, at least at the amateur stage. Amateur fights are scored on a points system. Each punch landed earns you one. The bouts consist of three two-minute rounds. (If that doesn't sound like much, try hopping around and punching nonstop for even half that time.) Unlike the pros, we get to wear tons of protective gear—headgear, chest protector, mouth guard, and a foul protector that covers the general vicinity of the uterus. Opponents are matched according to weight class—I'm fighting 139. Oh, one more small fact: Women's boxing is so new that the USA Boxing commission has yet to sort us into novice and open classes, like they do the men. Which means that, in my first fight, I could be matched with another woman in her 21^st. I'm hoping this rule changes very soon. It certainly doesn't encourage us newbies to jump right in. Getting trounced in the ring can be an ugly, bloody, shameful thing. If you're really getting beaten, the refs will step in and stop the fight. Talk about humiliating.

I started boxing because, though I'd been athletic as a kid, sports had drifted out of my adult life, and I really missed that open, healthy kind of competition. I was looking for something I could take up as a 32-year-old woman and still have a fighting chance. Women's boxing is a relatively new phenomenon. The amateurs held their first world championships last November, and four women from New York went to represent the United States. Rumor has it female boxing will make an appearance at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Few women have been fighting for more than three or four years, though some have an edge coming from martial arts backgrounds. If you start training now, you just might make the Olympic ring. (Not me though; I'm too old and, frankly, just not good enough.)

I have to admit I also took up boxing because the ring is still considered a man's territory. That appeals to me. Having spent a fair portion of my life hanging at the racetrack, I've found there's something refreshing about these final few macho bastions of sport. The atmosphere at Gleason's is unabashedly male. There's no pussyfooting, no saying what you don't mean or not meaning what you say. There's no comparison, just competition. The guys are there to do their thing, and, for the most part, they leave you alone to do yours.

I've had a few people tell me women shouldn't fight, that it would be a shame to ruin this pretty face. I think the best response came from my training partner, Francine. People have said women shouldn't do a lot of things. We do them anyway. Rediscovering my sports-loving self has been a real growth process. I'm reminded of all the confidence and physical courage I had as a kid. I'm forced to confront my fears every single time I step into the ring, even just to spar. A good boxer has to be strong, smart, brave, focused, and maybe a bit lucky.

Last week one of the trainers told me and Francine that he'd gone to church to pray for us. He said he prayed for all the girls at Gleason's, but especially us. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. But I'll take any help I can get.

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