Boxing Debut at Uppercut Gym in Northeast Minneapolis

On November 14, 2015 I made my amateur boxing debut on the Golden Gloves amateur event held at Uppercut Boxing Gym on Quincy St. in Northeast Minneapolis. I'd been training at Uppercut for about a year and a half to improve my hands and overall boxing. Most of my training is done at The Cellar Gym, but I found boxing-specific work to be very beneficial for Muay Thai, and a Muay Thai fighter with good boxing is a scary fighter. We already utilize our hands very well at The Cellar, so my plan was just to be a top notch puncher.

After working with my boxing coaches at Uppercut, I think they were getting a little anxious with me training hard under their guidance, but then taking the skills that we work so hard on, and using them only in Muay Thai fights. After sparring more at the boxing gym, my coaches were like, "We need to get you a boxing fight."

So, we settled on the November 14, 2015 Golden Gloves show to be held at Uppercut Gym. I began camp in good shape and 5 weeks was a good amount of time to turn up the training.

It was a tricky thing to take a boxing fight. I learned how to deal with a lot of unknown factors as matchups were not made way in advance. I didn't find out who I was fighting until about 3 days before the event. The other uneasy factor was that amateur boxing allows up to a 10lb difference in weight between two opponents. So, if I told the matchmaker that I was going to weigh 160lbs on the day of the event, by rule, I could be matched up with someone as heavy as 170lbs. If you've ever had to fight at a big weight disadvantage, you know how much it can suck, and it also weighs heavily on your mind if you know there is a weight discrepancy.

My goal was to be 160lbs on the day of the weigh-ins, these were day-of-fight weigh-ins so I was fighting closer to my true weight. On the Wednesday before the event, I was at 162lbs before finding out that they'd found me an opponent at 165lbs. Fair enough, that meant I could eat a little more over the next few days. Even with my strict dieting guidelines able to be put on the backburner, I wasn't able to get my weight back up for fight day and ended up weighing in at 163lbs. No big deal. I never found out what my opponent weighed in at, but we seemed to be pretty evenly matched.

The fight itself was a great learning experience. I felt that I was in control for 80% of the fight, but my opponent landed a thunderous punch in the second that earned me a standing 8-count. I was able to recover and re-take control of the round and the rest of the fight, picking apart my wilder opponent with snappy jabs, crosses, and uppercuts. I was happy to overcome the adversity of getting my bell rung, and felt that I was pretty fluid and had decent ring generalship in this fight. I did give up too much ground to my opponent, and that's something I continue to have to address. It doens't happen in sparring much anymore, I just have to be aware of it during fights, and if I need to move, it needs to be on an angle and not straight back.

It was a cool way to end 2015, a year in which I had 8 fights, came out with a 5-3 record for the year with 2 of those losses coming in the championship round of two different national tournaments. The more aware I become of recently turned-pro fighters who I look up to, many of them had 30-50 amatuer fights, so I see the ways I'm developing and am excited by how I'll look as an ammy with 30 fights. I'm getting more and more comfortable in the ring, I've figured out how to properly psyche myself up going into the fight, my preparation and dieting I believe is on a professional level, so I just have to continue to challenge myself and improve my fight performance every time out.