A Woman’s Ascent In Amateur Boxing: Lauren Michaels Speaks On Her Career, Aspirations, and Team
By: Talen Guzman
In the aftermath of COVID stymieing the professional and amateur careers of athletes for years, amateur boxing has started finding traction once more. In the second week of April 2022, the Western Pennsylvania Golden Gloves event took place, with winners qualifying for passage to the Pennsylvania Golden Gloves tournament in Philadelphia — a compilation of the state’s best amateur boxers all competing for gold.
With former winners of the state “PAGG” event including successful professionals such as Jaron Ennis (28–0), Paul Kroll (9–0–1), and Darmani Rock (17–1), it is safe to say the tournament holds weight in the world of boxing.
On the eve of the Western PA qualifiers, I sat down with experienced amateur Lauren Michaels, who competes at the show in the lightweight (132lbs/59.8kg) division and represents Altoona, Pennsylvania, U.S.
So, we’re about to head into the weekend! I doubt your schedule is a typical one, so run me through what a week’s agenda looks like for you.
Oh, dear God! Literally my entire week is wake up, go to work, get off work, go to the gym, go home, go to bed. Rinse, lather, repeat. I have absolutely no life whatsoever! [Laughs.]
So you definitely have a stable routine at this point!
For the most part, yeah. My job is a little unstable in the sense that my schedule can vary a lot and I have to travel a good bit but for the most part it’s pretty consistent.
What is it you do for work?
So I have a super weird job! I am a former drug and alcohol counselor, and I worked at an inpatient drug treatment center. I left that to work at a private boarding school for girls and I work in their equestrian program. [Laughs].
Oh! Okay, so what do you do in the equestrian program?
I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades, so depending on staffing I may be in the barn doing manual labor, shoveling horse poop, feeding the horses, [tending to] their general care. Right now our staffing is pretty good so I’m kind of more the secretary, doing a lot of our paperwork, helping keep that stuff situated. And I also chaperone the students when we go on trips.
That’s got to be much lower stress than the counselor position.
Oh yeah, it’s way less stress, it’s just a lot of time! Usually people hear about it and they’re like “oh?”.
Well it is an untraditional line of work, the equestrian program. So what do you get up on your down time, if you even have any?
Like two hours a day? [Laughs.] Honestly, my down time is spent sitting on my couch and decompressing from the longest day ever — every single day.
This is your fourth year of training and competition. How many bouts have you gotten under your belt now?
I have … it’s not even a high number and I’m so bad at keeping track because I have a few exhibitions that didn’t count towards my record, some that did end up doing so. I think I’m at about 14, and tomorrow will be 15!
How have you felt since making the step up to competing as an *Open fighter?
[*Open competitors in amateur boxing typically have 10+ official bouts, and the depth of competition is far greater. It is akin to going from a “Novice” bracket to an “Expert” bracket.]
I feel really good about it. Because of where I live, there aren’t a ton of female fighters in my division, so even before I officially moved up to Open, I fought a lot of Open class girls before I even had 10 fights. It was just what was available, and I was trying to take any fights I could. I feel really good about it, I’ve sparred a lot of experienced girls, a few pros, and I feel like I’m on-level with all those other women.
How are you feeling coming into this weekend?
Tomorrow? I feel real good about that. It’s my opening bout for the Golden Gloves of western Pennsylvania, and all I have to do is win tomorrow night to go to the state championships, so I should be good!
We have Nationals, more Golden Gloves tournaments, and other events coming up throughout the year in the U.S. What does your road map look like for the rest of the year?
Well, tomorrow the plan of course is to win and go to state finals. Those were supposed to be at the end of April, but I think they moved it because national qualifiers in Cleveland are the same week. Unfortunately I can’t go to that [national qualifiers in Cleveland] because I have an unavoidable work trip that week, so I’m skipping the national qualifiers. But ultimately the plan is sometime this summer — depending on how Golden Gloves goes — to work towards a pro debut. Either late summer, early fall.
Next week, we have a home show in my gym that I plan to fight on. And May 14 there’s another card I am trying to get onto. Then, unless I go to Golden Gloves Nationals, that will likely be my last amateur fight. And then I’m going to spend the summer training for a pro debut!
That’s a huge step! Have you talked to any promoters or managers yet?
I really haven’t been seeking anyone out yet. This is a whole new world to me, and I’m letting my coach tell me what to do, where to be, when to be there. He’s talked to some people and he knows some promoters, and he has another pro fighter that he’s had for a while, so he’s talked to some guys in the area to help get my name out there. But right now it’s just about getting my name out there; nothing too formal yet, but just “wait and see what happens” at this point.
Since you’re nearing the end of your amateur career, this is the perfect time to ask about your standout experiences as a competitor. Any bouts you learned something particular from, or a rivalry or two that developed?
Oh yeah. If we go with bouts that stand out the most to me, my bout at the national tournament in Shreveport, Louisiana. I fought a whopping one time there, and lost! I fought a girl from Cleveland, she’s great, her name is Mariana Rosado. She’s great, we followed each other on Instagram and I fought her, and I learned so much from that fight just about my personal style and how to develop it.
Watching the tape after the fight happens and just seeing the things I was doing and moving around; how I thought I looked versus how I actually looked turned out to be on two totally different planes of existence. I thought I was being elusive and moving and looking active, but in reality it looked like I was running away and not being as offensive minded as I wanted to be.
I thought of that as being my turning point. Since then, I’ve been completely switching up my style, trying to get a little more settled with my footwork, get a little more comfortable and active in front of my opponents instead of moving around the ring quite so much. So in terms of turning points, I would say that fight in Shreveport really changed the game for me for sure.
It’s great to hear you reference that. It’s honestly rare to hear people talk more about their losses than their wins.
Oh man, I’ve learned so much. I’ll tell anyone — and kudos to my coach because he’s the one who put it in my head first of all. He was like “if you’re going to go pro who gives a f*** about your amateur record, anyway? You’re going to learn more from your losses.” and he’s been right every time. Every loss I’ve had — admittedly there have not been that many of them [laughs] — I’ve learned so much just reviewing those tapes and looking at what went wrong. Of course the wins are great too, but I’ve learned so much more from losing.
As an experienced competitor in women’s boxing, this is a question I ask many of your peers in combat sports. How do you feel about the lower round duration and lower number of rounds that some amateur and professional boxing rule sets still utilize for female competitor?
I hate it! Every female fighter I know spars three minute rounds, Nationals are three minute rounds, etc. There is no reason women can’t fight the same length and amount of rounds as dudes when we already do it to train! Two minute rounds are too short to effectively set up good traps, really show off IQ. Let us womenfolk fight three minute rounds!
As you get ready to move on from your amateur career, what would you say to someone just getting started in theirs?
Well, I would first say not to tell yourself that you won’t have time to spar or fight or do any of that because that’s what I told myself [laughs] and look what happened there. But honestly the only thing I could only tell people is to keep showing up. The sport can have its moments where it’s very discouraging, it can be very frustrating, annoying, infuriating, but honestly it’s all just a passing moment in time and I guarantee you, just come back the next day and keep working on stuff and it keeps getting better.
I’ve had so many days where I go “I hate boxing and I’m never doing this again” and then I come back the next day and it’s totally different!
Now the most fun part, shout out time. Where people can find you, your team — boost that follower count.
Alright, first of all follow my Instagram account @wtfwhoa. First follow me there. Then shout out my team! My gym is Scorchin’ Boxing, we’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, definitely give them a follow. Any time we travel to fights, we do a live stream to highlight all our fighters. Let me see … my coach, Jeremiah Witherspoon, he’s the best. I love him, he’s the biggest mentor of my life, he literally saved my life. Appreciate him more than anything in the world.
My other coaches Ty and Flores, can’t forget them. My sparring partners, let me shout out a few of them! Sydney Ross from Altoona, Lateesha Mohl from Harrisburg, Maria Antúnez from Erie, PA, all of them are great. I can’t get enough work from them. LeAnna Cruz from Reading, PA. Her and Lateesha are both pros. Lateesha has a pro fight [on April 23, 2022]. LeAnna Cruz just finished 2–0 in her last fight.
Guys from my gym like Corey Lopez, he’s our professional fighter. He’s training and should hopefully be getting another fight soon. And just my brothers from the gym. Harold Camper, Paulo, Martin Dunson, Chug, all of the guys at the gym. I love them, I appreciate them for never treating me like a girl. I’m the only chick in the gym and I’m like their big-little sister because I’m older than almost all of them.
And you beat them up?
Of course. [Laughs.]
Lauren found herself successful at her Golden Gloves debut in the Western Pennsylvania event, winning by decision! She will now be preparing for a packed competition schedule that includes an appearance at the state Golden Gloves tournament later this year in addition to a hopeful professional debut in late 2022.
Give her a follow on Instagram, and support her gym Scorchin’ Boxing on Instagram and Facebook.
