Metro Pulse/Gamut/Women's Boxing

Women's boxing used to be a punchline. Now, it's weaving into the mainstream and hooking sports enthusiasts' attention—just ask Knoxville's Jonna Sutherland.

by Mike Gibson

Jonna Sutherland maneuvers around the old canvas-and-clapboard boxing ring at the geometric center of Knoxville's Golden Gloves Arena, her hands raised, her body set, spring-like, in a taut crouch. In combinations of two, three and sometimes four, she launches crisp punches into the leather hand-pads of her trainer, whose own form is likewise poised in a boxing stance.

The man wielding the pads, one-time Olympian and former top featherweight contender Bernard Taylor, is a highly recognized figure among local fight fans. Having retired 10 years ago after a long and fruitful pro career, he's a GG regular and still looks like a fighter who could step into a professional ring and dismantle even a classy opponent.

He also looks like a man who's made an easy transition from wily pugilist to savvy trainer, orchestrating Sutherland's circuitous maneuverings through his own calculated "attacks." At one point, he swings his left-hand pad in an arc, away from his body and then in towards Sutherland's head in the fashion of a wide-swung left hook. Sutherland deftly "slips" the would-be punch by means of a quick, short recoiling, then responds with three snapping punches of her own, a left jab followed by a straight right and then a left hook. The blows are stopped easily by Taylor's uncannily quick hands, but might well have impacted the vulnerable flesh of a less skillful opponent.

"So many new boxers, women especially, get in there and 'chicken box,' swinging as hard as they can," Taylor says at ringside after the sparring session has ended, his smooth face marred only by two lonely beads of perspiration. "Jonna's not going to do that. She's gonna be a schooled boxer, a smart boxer."

Boxing wiles are but one of many things that set Sutherland apart, as both a boxer and as a woman. In the brackish atmosphere of the boxing gym, her white skin and blonde hair and feminine form are glaring anomalies among the hard-muscled and predominantly African-American fighters who surround her.

And it perhaps goes without saying that few other 37-year-old female computer programmers share Sutherland's infatuation with the Sweet Science. "Ali was my idol when I was a kid," says Sutherland, perpetually cheerful and pretty, blessed with an unusually soft southern drawl. She's also run track, practiced martial arts and played tennis over the years, and it's worth noting that she can now remember many details of Taylor's career better than the ex-champ himself.

"(Boxing) was something I thought I would try even then. I love the challenge and the independence of individual sports. Boxing was the hardest one I could come up with."

Sutherland's first tentative walk into the Golden Gloves arena came some three-and-a-half years ago, when the former Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido instructor finally mustered the courage to try the sport that had once captivated her childhood imagination.

Her early training was a do-it-yourself affair, all osmosis, careful observation and trial-and-error. Occasionally, other boxers offered tips. Most of the time, Sutherland simply watched those fighters who most impressed her, then tried to mimic their skills as she worked on the heavy punching bags that line the gymnasium walls or shadow-boxed in front of one of the ubiquitous full-length mirrors.

One day about a year ago, local boxing manager Ace Miller happened by and recommended that Jonna seek training tips from Taylor, who was at that moment shadow-boxing on the other side of the gym. His pointers on fight fundamentals clicked with Sutherland, and soon she was badgering the retired great to become her permanent trainer.

"Boxing is all about self-motivation, and that's what I saw in Jonna," Taylor says of his eventual concession. "She worked hard, she asked questions. With her determination, she reminded me of myself when I was starting out."

The comparison would seem to hold true in other respects as well. Like Taylor, a skilled ring craftsman, Sutherland perceives boxing as inner struggle rather than aggressive blood sport. "I don't like to fight as much as I like the energy exchange," she explains. "I like the instant feedback, the reactions, where you get clocked if you make a mistake. You learn a lot about yourself in training and fighting—how you respond to pain, how you respond to stressful situations."

And like the BT Express (Taylor's ring name), who was motivated early on by peers who taunted that he was too small to fight, Sutherland was challenged by the prospect of crossing the gender line in a sport that has only recently begun to accept female participation.

Cross it she did, though, and today her very regular presence at the Golden Gloves arena is viewed no more dubiously than that of any other fighter dancing across the permanently mottled concrete floor.

"I remember seeing her the very first day I came in here," remembers 19-year-old Powell native Mike Pannell, a bullish but earnest-faced amateur whose brief career has already yielded a championship in the East Tennessee Novice Super Heavyweight division. "She never stops; she's one of the last ones to leave and one of the first ones here. I think all the guys here adapted pretty well. She's friendly with a lot of them, and they treat her with the respect they would another man."

Sutherland's days always begin early, when she rises before the sun and heads out for the daily three-to-five mile, 5-in-the-morning jog that is the sine qua non training staple of seemingly every fighter in the history of the sport. "You've gotta have your wind," explains BT, "and early in the morning there's not so many toxins in the air."

Her evening regimen consists of two to three hours of boxing on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, supplemented by two hours of weightlifting every Tuesday and Friday. Both her routines and her diet—which consists of up to six low-calorie meals per day, high in protein and low in carbohydrates—are tailored to promote speed and staying power rather than plodding strength. "I call it the 'inner strength' of the muscles," Taylor says. "In boxing, a lot of times the guys with the long lean muscles hit harder than the guys with the big thick arms."

Her gym workout typically consists of five to seven exercises, including shadow boxing, bag work and rope-skipping, each of which is conducted in round-length three-minute bursts in order to acclimate her to the rhythms of an actual fight.

Female training partners are in short supply, of course, especially in East Tennessee. For Jonna, however, that isn't an issue, as her well-traveled male training partner has the pugilistic know-how to mimic any conceivable attack, the speed to rebuff even her full-force punches, and the skill to pull his counter-attacks short of real damage.

"He pulls his punches enough for me to feel it and know I should have gotten out of the way, but not enough to hurt me," Sutherland says. "And I can go full on without worrying about it. If I can hit him, I can hit anybody."

What will set Sutherland apart when she takes the ring for her first professional fight, says Taylor, will be her versatility and technical know-how, the complexity of her attacks and counters. He explains that most current female fighters have tethered themselves to the classic one-two combination, the set-up left jab—the range-finder and measuring stick—followed by the hard straight right.

Sutherland's functional arsenal includes all seven of boxing's basic punches, strikes that can be infinitely recombined, unleashed in different combinations in answer to a given opponent's attack. Taylor's process is to teach his charge the art of pugilistic improvisation, a marriage of split-second analysis and muscle memory, such that Sutherland may react in the moment rather than rely on patterned response.

"Everyone thinks it's difficult, more complicated than it is," Taylor says. "But there are only seven punches. The rest is just how you put them in your brain."

Women's boxing would seem to be in the infancy of its popularity, if indeed it continues to grow following the recent ascendancy of heroines such as top super middleweight contender Laila Ali, offspring of the Greatest, or once-beaten Christy Martin, the Coal Miner's Daughter, who is still regarded by many as the best female fighter in any weight classification. The fledgling sport now receives regular press coverage as well as higher-profile billing (Ali fights for a super middleweight championship belt on the undercard of the June 7 Mike Tyson/Lennox Lewis heavyweight men's bout.)

At 130 pounds, Sutherland has already received several offers to fight in the junior lightweight classification. But she's careful to remind you that her career is still in its infant stage as well, and Taylor envisions several more months of training before the Virginia native will accept her first pro fight. "Right now, we're just learning the game," he says. "We're a good piece away from picking out a specific title or a specific fighter to set our sights on. When she's ready, there are lots of fights out there waiting."

In the meantime, Jonna Sutherland will continue her three-nights-per-week schedule at the stuffy and sweat-stained old gymnasium at the corner of Knoxville's Chilhowee Park, weaving, dancing, popping jabs and hooks alongside the city's best living boxer, in a crowd that includes some of its halest young men.

"I feel like I've gotten respect from the guys who fight here because they see me coming in day in and day out," says Sutherland relaxing ringside in street clothes after a Monday night workout. "And for the women I meet, the fact that I'm a boxer is exciting to them. I think it's something in the back of every woman's mind—to feel empowered this way, to feel powerful."