Alicia Ashley: World Champion Boxer

Alicia Ashley, Elena "Baby Doll" Reid, Las Vegas, Mary Ann Owen, female boxing

Alicia Ashley pictured right, fighting Elena "Baby Doll" Reid in Last Vegas, 2005. Copyrighted photo by Mary Ann Owen. Boxer751@aol.com

There is monetary gain involved in winning a title, but we don't get paid like the guys do. If I walked in and said I was a three-time World Champion as a guy, I'd be making six or seven figures. For the women, you're lucky if youÃ¢â‚

Alicia Ashley , U.S.A.

Date Posted: 12/28/06

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Jamaican-born Alicia Ashley is a three-title World Champion in the highly competitive yet underrated sport of women's boxing. While she started out as a classical dancer, a knee injury set her on the path of competitive sports where she could apply the mobility and strength she'd developed through performance. Originally, training to be a boxer was intended to improve her kickboxing skills, but it didn't take long before she was hooked. She trains alongside men, and in the ring, she has proven that girls can fight too - and maybe even better than the boys. Female boxing is still not included in the Olympic Summer Games, but if women like Alicia Ashley have anything to do about it, that could be changing by 2012. Ashley says the sport remains chauvinistic in many ways, but training with men and earning their respect has only pushed her toward excellence.

I was born in Jamaica and moved to the States in 1978 when I was eleven years old. Growing up, we'd always wanted to come to New York, but we didn't realize it would be so cold, and I still haven't gotten used to it. I started out originally as a dancer - ballet, modern and jazz. My father is a choreographer and both his daughters started dancing. My goal was to become a professional dancer until I injured my knee and couldn't dance anymore.

I didn't imagine myself getting into boxing until my late 20s, and it wasn't even the boxing that brought me into it. After dancing, I started doing karate. I wasn't interested in it growing up, but when I got injured, I started doing karate for the exercise. It came relatively easy for me because as a dancer, I had the mobility and the strength. From dancing, I was always on stage and liked being the center of attention, so I started competing in karate. After a while I decided karate wasn't competitive enough so I started doing kickboxing.

For my first kickboxing match as an amateur, my opponent was a boxer. In kickboxing, you have to kick eight times per round, and then you can box. So when she used her hands, she got me in the corner and I really didn't know what to do. Because of that, I decided I needed to use my hands, so I started boxing just to get better as a kickboxer. And then I found out I really enjoyed boxing and was getting a lot more competition through it.

All the sports I've ended up in have all been individual sports. I was never interested in team sports.