Cinderella Story
I walk up the rickety stairs of the Cleveland Boxing Academy and into a movie set straight from Sylvester Stallone or Clint Eastwood.
The same peeling paint, the same tattered poster of Muhammad Ali, the same punched-out speed bag. A lean guy skipping rope and an empty sparring ring. In movies, back-alley gyms like this are where nobodies become contenders and where has-beens become legends.
If Melinda Woody’s life were a screenplay, I’d be meeting her at the end of Act One…in which the Unknown Kid shows Great Potential.
We sit down by the vacant ring. Her trainer Mike Lewis looks on, along with her manager Jeff Yarber. They’re clearly very fond of her. She’s blonde, a bit petite, what my grandmother would have called “homespun pretty.” Her nickname is “2 Cute.”
“Why boxing?” I ask. I don’t realize until later what a stupidly chauvinistic question this is.
Melinda tells me her story.
She was a three-sport athlete in the PCHS class of ’98, but a few short years later found herself soft around the middle and working a desk job. Her glory days were long gone. She made what some might call an unusual decision.
“I heard of a Tough Woman bout,” she says, “and just wanted to do something to stay back in shape. I was always athletic, and after three kids what can you do to stay in shape?”
Hmm…work out at Curves? Go paddling? Buck hay? Anything besides get punched in the face?
Melinda grins. “My neighborhood was all guys. I played football with all the guys in the back yard. Got beat up a bunch.”
When she smiles, her teeth are all there. I notice that she’s brick-solid. I wonder exactly who was beating up on whom.
Jeff Yarber, a former Golden Gloves champion and current Bradley County Commissioner (insert many jokes here), soon got her in touch with Mike. But Mike refused to train her. Everybody wants to box until they find out how much work is involved. Mike wanted to see if she had talent, and more importantly, that mysterious and essential quality called “heart.”
So…“A year and a half, I fought Tough Woman,” she says. Tough Woman, if you haven’t heard, is a sort of loosely organized amateur fighting series where women the size of wildebeest try to mash one another into giblet gravy. It is to professional boxing what slam-dancing is to Swan Lake.
“I only trained for two weeks before my first Tough Woman fight,” Melinda remembers. “I actually beat a former Tough Woman champion. Then I fought again in East Ridge and won that one. I fought again in Alabama against a woman that was fifty pounds heavier than me and I won a belt in that one.”
I whistle. Melinda weighs maybe one-twenty, so as a relatively inexperienced amateur she beat a hundred and seventy-pound belt-holding brawler—a woman I wouldn’t approach without a tranquilizer gun.
And this turned out to be talent and heart enough for Mike. “After she went and fought—” he says, chuckling—“we began to recognize that this is actually something she can do.”
Jeff speaks up. “I’ve worked with Mike now for fifteen years. Over those fifteen years I’ve probably seen five hundred people come to events who want to be fighters—they say. Until they see it’s a lot of guts, a little glory. People don’t understand how hard it is to come here five days a week and work out, how bad you feel. Your hands are always aching. Your body’s always aching. Then when you actually get in the ring and get hit a couple of times, that heart leaves.”
Melinda does have heart, that’s for sure. I watched a tape of her second professional fight, from last March, and I saw right away how Melinda used her wits and her training. As the four-round fight progressed, she wore her opponent down with good guarding, quick punch-volleys, and nimble footwork. By the final round her opponent was dragging and Melinda was still dancing and jabbing. Inspiring stuff.
But her heart goes beyond the ring. After that fight she decided to quit her day job to train full-time. I think about this very hard.
“I don’t get,” I finally say, “why some people think it’s easier to work a job they can’t stand for not enough money to get by on. And when they have a dream, they won’t pursue it…they’ll settle.”
Melinda starts nodding. “When I’m in the ring and I get hit, it’s just so easy to think ‘I don’t have to do this.’ You have to be hungry for it. You have to want it. I want to give my kids what I didn’t have. I want for them to be able to go to college straight out of high school. I want to be something, you know what I mean? I want to look back and say, ‘I did something.’”
Melinda, a single mom, could have easily relaxed into the security of a day job. For that matter, she could have easily relaxed into a drug habit, gone on the government dole, found evil companions, and squandered whatever potential she might have had.
In that light, what do a few punches in the face matter?
Will Melinda make a million bucks? Maybe, if she keeps winning. She’s marketable, but still ten or so wins away from the big purses. Those fights are Act Two, in which Cinderella Goes Dancing. Jeff and Mike are bringing her along gradually so she won’t peak out before she matures. The peak comes in Act Three, the Title Bout. Things get dark and heavy in Act Three, and there are no guarantees.
I hope she wins it, because I admire anyone with the guts to chase dreams. Meanwhile she’s got a good fall-back plan. She’s engaged now, starting school to be a P.E. teacher. Hopefully at PCHS. I like that idea too, because that’s where I’ll be sending my daughter someday. By then my daughter might need a few pointers on how to roll with a punch.
And on how to beat up the neighborhood guys, come to think of it.
The same peeling paint, the same tattered poster of Muhammad Ali, the same punched-out speed bag. A lean guy skipping rope and an empty sparring ring. In movies, back-alley gyms like this are where nobodies become contenders and where has-beens become legends.
If Melinda Woody’s life were a screenplay, I’d be meeting her at the end of Act One…in which the Unknown Kid shows Great Potential.
We sit down by the vacant ring. Her trainer Mike Lewis looks on, along with her manager Jeff Yarber. They’re clearly very fond of her. She’s blonde, a bit petite, what my grandmother would have called “homespun pretty.” Her nickname is “2 Cute.”
“Why boxing?” I ask. I don’t realize until later what a stupidly chauvinistic question this is.
Melinda tells me her story.
She was a three-sport athlete in the PCHS class of ’98, but a few short years later found herself soft around the middle and working a desk job. Her glory days were long gone. She made what some might call an unusual decision.
“I heard of a Tough Woman bout,” she says, “and just wanted to do something to stay back in shape. I was always athletic, and after three kids what can you do to stay in shape?”
Hmm…work out at Curves? Go paddling? Buck hay? Anything besides get punched in the face?
Melinda grins. “My neighborhood was all guys. I played football with all the guys in the back yard. Got beat up a bunch.”
When she smiles, her teeth are all there. I notice that she’s brick-solid. I wonder exactly who was beating up on whom.
Jeff Yarber, a former Golden Gloves champion and current Bradley County Commissioner (insert many jokes here), soon got her in touch with Mike. But Mike refused to train her. Everybody wants to box until they find out how much work is involved. Mike wanted to see if she had talent, and more importantly, that mysterious and essential quality called “heart.”
So…“A year and a half, I fought Tough Woman,” she says. Tough Woman, if you haven’t heard, is a sort of loosely organized amateur fighting series where women the size of wildebeest try to mash one another into giblet gravy. It is to professional boxing what slam-dancing is to Swan Lake.
“I only trained for two weeks before my first Tough Woman fight,” Melinda remembers. “I actually beat a former Tough Woman champion. Then I fought again in East Ridge and won that one. I fought again in Alabama against a woman that was fifty pounds heavier than me and I won a belt in that one.”
I whistle. Melinda weighs maybe one-twenty, so as a relatively inexperienced amateur she beat a hundred and seventy-pound belt-holding brawler—a woman I wouldn’t approach without a tranquilizer gun.
And this turned out to be talent and heart enough for Mike. “After she went and fought—” he says, chuckling—“we began to recognize that this is actually something she can do.”
Jeff speaks up. “I’ve worked with Mike now for fifteen years. Over those fifteen years I’ve probably seen five hundred people come to events who want to be fighters—they say. Until they see it’s a lot of guts, a little glory. People don’t understand how hard it is to come here five days a week and work out, how bad you feel. Your hands are always aching. Your body’s always aching. Then when you actually get in the ring and get hit a couple of times, that heart leaves.”
Melinda does have heart, that’s for sure. I watched a tape of her second professional fight, from last March, and I saw right away how Melinda used her wits and her training. As the four-round fight progressed, she wore her opponent down with good guarding, quick punch-volleys, and nimble footwork. By the final round her opponent was dragging and Melinda was still dancing and jabbing. Inspiring stuff.
But her heart goes beyond the ring. After that fight she decided to quit her day job to train full-time. I think about this very hard.
“I don’t get,” I finally say, “why some people think it’s easier to work a job they can’t stand for not enough money to get by on. And when they have a dream, they won’t pursue it…they’ll settle.”
Melinda starts nodding. “When I’m in the ring and I get hit, it’s just so easy to think ‘I don’t have to do this.’ You have to be hungry for it. You have to want it. I want to give my kids what I didn’t have. I want for them to be able to go to college straight out of high school. I want to be something, you know what I mean? I want to look back and say, ‘I did something.’”
Melinda, a single mom, could have easily relaxed into the security of a day job. For that matter, she could have easily relaxed into a drug habit, gone on the government dole, found evil companions, and squandered whatever potential she might have had.
In that light, what do a few punches in the face matter?
Will Melinda make a million bucks? Maybe, if she keeps winning. She’s marketable, but still ten or so wins away from the big purses. Those fights are Act Two, in which Cinderella Goes Dancing. Jeff and Mike are bringing her along gradually so she won’t peak out before she matures. The peak comes in Act Three, the Title Bout. Things get dark and heavy in Act Three, and there are no guarantees.
I hope she wins it, because I admire anyone with the guts to chase dreams. Meanwhile she’s got a good fall-back plan. She’s engaged now, starting school to be a P.E. teacher. Hopefully at PCHS. I like that idea too, because that’s where I’ll be sending my daughter someday. By then my daughter might need a few pointers on how to roll with a punch.
And on how to beat up the neighborhood guys, come to think of it.
posted by GratefulEd | 6:39 AM
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