Editor’s note: this interview has been edited. No context has been changed.
I’m not surprised when Jackie Kallen tells me she grew up surrounded by men.
“I only had a brother growing up. My dad was one of three brothers and they were all close. I married a guy that was one of four brothers. Then I had two sons.”
Jackie embraced what she calls “that testosterone-driven side of me.”
“I love sports, I love fast cars, I love gambling. But I still have the girly girl. Even in a boxing gym where it was dirty and sweaty and hot, I would be doing my nails, my hair, my makeup, all dressed to the nines—I kept my femininity always front and center.”
Jackie’s balance of traditional masculine and feminine traits took many men in the boxing world aback.
“Initially there’d be, 'What is she doing here? She looks like she got out of the beauty shop.’ Eventually they started to understand that's just my exterior, my package. So after a while they’d forget the nails and the hair and the makeup and the jewelry, and just talk.”
In 1979, Kallen interviewed now-legendary fighter Thomas ‘Hit Man’ Hearns, who was just 20 at the time.
“I see this guy coming into the ring…I tell you I was scared. I looked in his eyes and I thought, ‘Whoever has to face him, he’s gonna get hurt.’ It was the most deadly stare I'd seen in my life.
“He knocks his opponent out, the fight’s over. The guy he knocked out, Tommy’s helping pick him up, he’s hugging him, ‘Are you okay, are you okay?’ And he's got the softest kindness brown eyes. I went, ‘Is that the same guy?’ I mean, how you can go from being an assassin to being a pacifist lover? And the beauty of the movements. It was like watching a ballet but a violent ballet: they slip, they slide, they weave. And there was a reason for every movement, there was a whole strategy to this ballet. Plus these guys, a lot of them were fighting not just in the ring, but in their lives. I was fascinated.”
Beloved trainer Emmanuel Steward took Jackie under his wing. “Emmanuel didn't look at me as a woman,” says Jackie. “He looked at me as someone who loved the sport.”
Steward taught her everything about boxing, including how to cut an injured fighter’s swollen eye so he could continue a fight. But Jackie still needed to practice.
“I came to the gym with a razor, I said ‘I want to work on cuts today, who volunteers?’ Nobody did. So I went to the market and I got some purple plums and I squeezed them till they were all like mushy juicy, and then I sliced open the plum and as it started to leak out, I'd stop it with the Avitene and the Vaseline, I'd hold down the gauze pad to soak up the blood. I would practice on plums.”
Jackie became a manager, setting up fights, negotiating contracts—and being her fighters’ best friend.
“I’d help them open their first checking account, buy their first car…they became part of my family. I’m still in touch with all of the guys I've managed. They’re still my friends.”
How did she pick who she managed?
“Natural organically-given ability. Great discipline, the last one in the gym. And the third part, which is the most intangible, is heart. Do you have heart? I’ve had great fighters who’d get a guy hurt but they wouldn't finish him. You got to want to go in there and destroy. So it's a combination. And if I have all three in a guy, I know I got something.”
Jackie believed she had something in James Toney, and she was right. Now considered one of the best middleweights of all time, Toney won his first title in 1991 as a 20-1 underdog, with Jackie as his manager.
“It was a fairy tale. That surreal moment of knowing that now people are going to take you seriously. I was on top of the world.”
It was a far cry from when Jackie first started in boxing. Harassment of women was the norm.
“‘You want your kid on my card? Show me how bad you want it.’ Or ‘Why don't you go into modeling? You don’t belong here.’ Who's to say where I belong? Me. I decide where I belong.
“At one fight they wouldn’t let me in the ring with my fighter. They said, ‘Go put on a bathing suit. I'll give you a ring card. Walk around, round one, round two.’ Is that all a woman's good for?”
Jackie was so unique that Hollywood came calling, casting Meg Ryan as Jackie in Against the Ropes. “Here I was, all glammed up, going into boxing gyms…I guess I was an object of fascination to people,” Jackie speculates, "because I didn't look the part.”
Though Jackie still manages, she’s also found a new love: motivational speaking. She loves sharing her life lessons.
“I have four heart stents. I’ve had two lumpectomies. I have glaucoma. I'm legally blind in my right eye. I have sleep apnea. I’ve had two malignant melanomas. Those are all the downsides that we all deal with. You just take them, file them away, and get on with your life. If you get knocked down in boxing and you're lying on the canvas, get back up again. That’s the only option. It’s a metaphor for life. If you lay there, they're going to count you out. You don't want to be counted out in life. If you lose a round, it's okay. Life has more rounds. So if you get knocked down, get back up. We're all fighting something. Just keep moving forward. Life is a big, big windshield with a little tiny rearview mirror. We’re not meant to look back. We're meant to look forward."
"[Guys in the boxing world would say] ‘Why don't you go into modeling? You don’t belong here.’ Who's to say where I belong? Me. I decide where I belong."
"You don't want to be counted out in life. If you get knocked down, get back up. We're all fighting something."
