We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alicia Doyle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alicia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
Before I started boxing at age twenty-eight, I viewed the sport as the dark side. My paradigm shifted in 1998 when I worked as a newspaper journalist and went on assignment at a boxing gym that served at-risk youth. While reporting this story, I fell in love with boxing, and for the next two years, fought competitively as one of only a few hundred women in America in this male-dominated sport. I earned my ring name—“Disaster Diva”—early on in the game for winning two Golden Gloves Championship titles and three wins by knockout. When I turned pro in 2000, I joined a small group of professional women boxers in the United States, and my pro debut at age thirty earned a place in history as the California Female Fight of the Year.
In the boxing gym, surrounded by men, I broke out of my comfort zone to earn respect for my athletic ability. This task required stripping away my femininity and the insecurities associated with being a woman in their world. I shed blood, sweat and tears alongside them, and worked twice as hard to prove myself before they accepted me as one of their own. The point is—and this is necessary to understand the difference between male and female fighters—in the boxing ring, men take for granted they are men. Women never forget they are women in this masculine space where femininity and fighting is a paradox.
Boxing is described as a noble art of self-defense, the sweet science, a channel for courage, determination and self-discipline. Boxing combines athleticism with skill, strength and artistry, and those who stay with boxing learn important skills for life: focus, heart and dedication—and how to get up when knocked down. I never expected boxing to infuse my psyche emotionally, spiritually and mentally, and put me on a path toward enlightenment. To this day, the skills I discovered in the ring translate to everyday life. I learned that the fight starts from within—and when faced head-on with conviction, honesty, vulnerability and faith, the battle is sublime.
Alicia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Alicia Doyle is an award-winning journalist whose first nonfiction novel, Fighting Chance, has won three literary awards since it was published in February of 2020. Fighting Chance also received a 5-Star Review by Readers’ Favorite, in which the judge stated: “There are life lessons embedded in this story: those of not giving up, of doing the impossible, of making a difference in the lives of others to name a few…If you are looking for a life story that will touch and empower you, Fighting Chance by Alicia Doyle is a must-read.”
In April of 2020, Alicia signed a movie contract with Slavica Bogdanov of Empowering Entertainment to bring Fighting Chance to the silver screen. The mission of Empowering Entertainment is “to create powerful stories to empower and inspire you to greater highs.” Slavica chose Alicia’s story because “I loved the courage and tenacity, and I was touched by the heart of a fighter who fights for her right to stand up for herself and win at the game of life.”
Slavica believes this film will be successful “because of the poignant story, the transformational arc as well as the motivation it provides for us to live a better life. Women and men will love to see Alicia’s character win her inner battles in order to win her fight in the ring.”
Prior to becoming an author, Alicia was a newspaper journalist for more than two decades, and earned a reputation as “The Writer Specializing in Good News” for authoring thousands of stories about inspirational people and efforts that have a positive impact. She discovered boxing when she went on assignment to cover a boxing gym for at-risk youth called Kid Gloves that had been destroyed by El Nino rains in the 1990s. In the process of writing about Kid Gloves, with her focus on the children who benefited from the sport of boxing, Alicia eventually started training herself at age 28. Back then, there were only a few hundred women in America competing in boxing, making Alicia one of few women breaking ground in this male-dominated sport. Alicia boxed competitively for two years, earning two Golden Gloves Championship titles; and her pro debut in 2000 was named The California Female Fight of the Year.
Alicia has since retired from boxing, but she remains involved in the sport as a volunteer coach for at-risk youth at Kid Gloves in Southern California. Alicia is also a personal trainer who specializes in the boxing workout with zero-contact, meaning her clients are not hitting another person, or getting hit. During these sessions, Alicia teaches all the physical skills and training methods she learned in the sport, including self-defense, while also honing the mind and spirit of her clients.
Alicia still writes for publications in Southern California, and is currently working on her third book, which will be fiction. This book is based on Alicia’s experience as a reporter when she covered special education and interviewed numerous individuals with severe physical and mental disabilities – and the selfless caregivers who help them with daily living.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In the months following my pro boxing debut—which I lost—I focused on building my freelance writing business, adjusted to life without starvation, and found workouts that didn’t leave me with black eyes, body aches and the fear of fighting. I never went to the hospital after my one and only professional fight, and never sought a diagnosis or treatment for the injury to my inner right ear, which remained swollen from the inside out.
I found great comfort in three-hour walks alone around the Hollywood Reservoir, and long hikes through Chumash Trail and Rocky Peak, where the Chumash Indians lived hundreds of years ago in the dramatic rocky outcroppings surrounded by native plants, hummingbirds and butterflies. On occasion, in the early morning hours before the sun came up, I spotted a deer or mountain lion, and immersed myself in the quiet, where my thoughts cleared away from the boxing ring.
In this solitude of self-examination, I came to life-altering realizations. My fight was never in the ring, but inward, with myself, my ego, my past, my inability to forgive, my inability to accept and move on. The only person hurting myself was me. This epiphany was a triumph that I transferred into my writing. I wrote about people who overcame great odds and managed to harness peace in their own lives, including Holocaust survivors, women who overcame heinous acts of domestic violence, and children with special needs who faced the world head-on despite their limitations. Their vulnerability brought me comfort, and during the brief time I spent with them, their stories revealed the most beautiful aspect of human nature—vulnerability—the commonality we all share, a great equalizer that connects us on the deepest level.
I was surprised when a reporter from the Los Angeles Times—who had interviewed me prior to my pro boxing debut—contacted me again to write a brief follow-up story, this time for an article on the front page of the Southern California Living section that ran on New Year’s Day in 2001. The article ran under the headline, Their Year That Was: A look at where some remarkable people are now, which featured updates on three individuals that had been profiled in the previous twelve months.
I was honored that this reporter selected me, of all people, who “shone” in the Times’ pages, and gave “a glimpse of the startling range of life” that had been chronicled in the newspaper in the last year of the second millennium. He wrote that shortly after The Times first profiled me, my adrenaline still ran high after my pro debut, but shortly after, I realized my heart wasn’t there anymore. He also captured my newfound wisdom perfectly.
“I lived a huge part of my life angry and resentful and unforgiving, and the sport relieves a lot of that,” I told the reporter during the interview. “Right now I can’t imagine getting in the ring and hurting another person anymore. And it’s a very peaceful feeling.”
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When I first expressed my sincere interest in boxing competitively, I was told: “You’re too pretty to box.” I never understood this reaction…
What does my reflection in the mirror have to do with me wanting to box like the women trailblazers who came before me, making my own mark in history? So I kept on training, as hard as I could. I welcomed the exhaustion and my outward transformation. With each passing day, my body grew stronger and leaner, a physicality which transcended to a growing inner strength that I never expected. On an athletic level, boxing is all about conditioning the body for power, endurance and stamina, and behind all this, the mind must also be strong, because if the mind is defeated, the body will follow.
These reflections reminded me of the metaphysical church my mother joined when I was twelve, where I learned about the power of the mind. I never thought these teachings had an effect on me, but here they were again. Whether in church, in life, or in the boxing ring, the same rule applies: “The more power one gives to his thought, the more power will it have.”
This rule doesn’t discriminate or involve judgment of any kind, making it rather simple: positive thoughts lead to positive outcomes, and negative thoughts lead to negative outcomes—in other words, cause and effect. While training, which would ultimately translate how I executed my skills in the ring, I couldn’t afford to have negative thoughts going through my mind. I had to focus solely on overpowering my opponent, outwitting them with my prowess, outpunching them with combinations, outsmarting them with my strategy.
Each time I trained, my mind and body grew stronger, while providing respite from all I already went through, silencing my emotional trauma from childhood, halting thoughts of weakness from being in an abusive relationship. Memories of my dad’s departure, my mom’s pernicious neglect, all went by the wayside as I zeroed in on the tasks before me: speed-climbing stairs at a stadium, running up a dirt trail carrying a twenty-pound backpack, pushing out hundreds of sit-ups, sparring grueling rounds with the guys. When Robert told me I was too pretty to box, my desire to fight became more profound than ever, partly because of the anomaly of female fighters, combined with my yearning to see just how far I could go in the sport.
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