|
Angel
McNamara, 30, figures she has 10 more
years to box professionally, and she’s loving
every minute of it.
advertisemenst
advertisemenst
|
(Gay)
Friday, February 27,
2004
TUCKED BACK IN an unremarkable warehouse district in
Glen Burnie, Md., sits Michael’s Eighth Avenue.
The hundreds of cars parked neatly on the shoulder of
Route176 suggest something big is happening tonight.
Perhaps as many as 2,000 men and women, many carrying
cups of beer in one hand and the night’s program in the
other, file inside.
This is one of six nights of the year that Michael’s
plays host to professional boxing, and one of the bouts
involves two women.
As a makeshift arena, it is not the type of place you
would expect to be particularly welcoming to gay men and
lesbians. But the fans, relatively bored by the night’s
other fights, have stirred to their feet to cheer on
Angel McNamara, a professional boxer, a local favorite
from Cambridge, Md., and a lesbian.
McNamara, whose record is 13-4, with three KOs,
defeated Talia Smith on a Thursday night in late
January. Her next fight will be on March 11.
A natural athlete, McNamara, 30, played numerous team
sports in college. She turned to boxing a few years ago
to “kick some bad habits,” and with quick success, a few
trainers encouraged her to pursue boxing, even
eventually turn pro.
While many men are
full-time professional boxers, there remains more supply
than demand for women’s matches. Often, the hardest
struggle for McNamara is not formidable opponents but
getting a match scheduled at all.
It leads to an exhausting “non-rhythm” of stops and
starts — vigorous training for a match and then nothing
for a few months. Ring rust, she calls it.
McNamara employs trainers, managers, and promoters to
help her move ahead and, finally, she’s getting some
deserved attention, though she can’t fight full-time
just yet. She works in the electronics field from 7 a.m.
to 4 p.m. each day, before heading to the gym.
MCNAMARA HAS EARNED the sport’s respect, but without
enough matches, it’s hard to build momentum.
Inside the ring she fights with superior footwork and
a swift upper cut. Outside, she fights the chauvinism
and the comparative invisibility of women’s boxing. One
gym in Baltimore expressed “no women” training in their
facility. Another kind of fight.
Not that McNamara doesn’t do her part to cultivate
excitement to the sport, and to herself. She’s
attractive, outspoken, an “entertainer,” with the skill
to back it up.
Known in boxing for talking trash, she’s also quick
to mind her manners as a self-described “country girl,”
showering praise upon her opponents, no matter how
overmatched they are. A junior lightweight, McNamara
admits to being afraid of her own strength and probably
should be, having flattened her opponent in her first
amateur fight. Ever since then, she has faced a haunting
instinct to grant leniency in the ring, no small hurdle
for a boxer.
McNamara confesses that she is nearing the middle of
a probable 10-year career.
“Boxing is an extreme sport, and I train very hard,”
she says, citing diet, running, gym work.
“I’m at the age where you either need to do it or
leave it alone.”
But she remains unbowed by the sport’s chauvinism and
intends to hold the title in not only her weight class,
but in others as well.
Through all of this, refreshingly, she insists
homophobia is not a factor.
“I come into this sport as a young lady trying to get
past that it’s a male-driven industry,” she says.
“Nobody’s ever commented on [my sexual orientation].
“I go through society the way everyone else does. I
am in the life,” she adds. “I support this life with
every part of my being [but] my sexuality is not an
issue, and I don’t make it one.”
McNamara welcomed the cheers and the support she
received in Glen Burnie, as well as the growing
attention. She playfully brags, a la Muhammad Ali, that
she’s, “Something nice. Something hot. Something to
beat. Something to believe in. Something you want to
be.”
Who can argue with that.
| 
