Ash Ruscoe wants to do things in reverse when it comes to her potential career in the fight game.
Ruscoe, who was a contestant on the Amazing Race once upon a time, runs a boxing and martial arts class, Hit Like A Girl, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and has put plans in place to achieve her goal of becoming a professional boxer at 33.
It’s not the usual path one would take in the boxing world, with retired fighters often opening gyms to offer their skills to novices looking to improve fitness, once their careers are over.
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Ruscoe has no qualms flipping the script.
“I had done a few kickboxing fights in my teens and then I switched to boxing three or four years ago for fitness,” she told Wide World of Sports.
“And then I said ‘You know what, I want to get in the ring and do some amateur fights and I’ve got a few lined up this year and I’ll see how I go and see if I want to turn professional’.”
If everything goes to plan for Ruscoe, she will go from teaching boxing classes to becoming a pro fighter. Not the other way around.
“I’ve signed up to The Contenders, which is a 12-week program with other skilled fighters,” she said.
“I’ve been matched up to fight in May but before that I’d like to do an exhibition fight at an amateur competition, which is potentially two more fights between now and May and I’d like to have one or two more fights before December as well.”
Ruscoe, a freestyle Karate blackbelt who fights as a southpaw in the squared circle, has always had a fascination with combat sports since she was a child and admits “I just love punching on” but the vehicle driving her goals to be a pro fighter, came from a darker place.
“After the Amazing Race, I broke up with a boyfriend and it was a messy break up with a domestic violence order,” she added.
“Because I was in the public eye at that time, it was all over the papers, articles around the domestic violence arrest. I felt disempowered so I started doing combat.
“I had done it when I was a kid and then I started my business, Hit Like A Girl, basically to empower women through combat sport and also through breathing and meditation.
“I’ve also worked with the women’s shelters in Sydney’s west and I just wanted to give back to women and help because it really helped me and I wanted to pass that on.”
While Ruscoe admits being in a fight is like “you’re going to die,” she believes that sense of fear can be used as a building block to inspire confidence, especially in women.
“It’s not really about competing anyway. I just love passing on the feeling it gave me. So many of my clients, women and men, have been assaulted at the hands of men. I think it gives you that level of confidence,” she said.
“Women become more aggressive as we get older. It might be a hormone thing. When I was five years old I was watching a karate school and I kept telling my mum I want to go fight.
“When I was young I used to step in and fight for my friends. When my brother got bullied I confronted the bullies at the bus stop. I’ve just wanted to beat people up my whole life!
“I think I was born with it, I don’t know what it was, I still have it now and that’s why I train so many women to defend themselves. It’s just something I have in me and I just love combat, I love punching on.”
Ruscoe’s goals of becoming a professional fighter in her early thirties isn’t as unrealistic as you might think.
IBF world bantamweight champion Ebanie Bridges is 36, Amanda Serrano is 34 and several other contenders are in their thirties.
“Women’s boxing is starting to pick up a lot now. We’ve got leaders like Ebanie Bridges, Skye Nicolson, ‘Sugar’ Neekz (Cherneka Johnson),” Ruscoe said.
“It wasn’t even legal like 15 years ago. That was part of the reason why I started the class because when I started it was all men punching on. The more we can make women feel comfortable in the sport the better.”
And what happens if she loses her first bout?
“That’s just going to give me fuel for the next one,” she said.
“With boxing you’ve got to have the mindset, whatever happens I just got in the ring. People love to criticise but if you’re not in the ring you’ve got no right. Getting in that ring is the hardest thing.”
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