The world champion boxer opens up about her training routine and goals as an athlete with influence.
It was only eight years after boxing was formally recognized as a women’s sport that Alycia Baumgardner entered the ring for the first time.
At five years old, she was wrestling, building up her confidence in a male-dominated sport. Not long after, her dad introduced her to boxing, a family favorite. Although Baumgardner says she didn’t initially understand what she had signed up for, she knew she was onto something when she realized she could “take a punch,” she tells EQX+.
“It just kind of showed me who I was as an athlete,” says Baumgardner. “I never really focused too much on the gender part. I just knew that I had the work ethic to be the best at something.”
Baumgardner was spot-on with her predictions.
The now-31-year-old, known as “The Bomb,” is a world champion boxer, reigning as the undisputed female super featherweight champion with a record of 16-1. In July, she competed in the first-ever all-women’s boxing card at Madison Square Garden, which featured 16 fighters and was broadcast on Netflix (see: “Taylor vs. Serrano 3”). After a 10-round fight with Spain’s Jennifer Miranda, Baumgardner was awarded a unanimous decision victory and held onto her prestigious title.
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Baumgardner credits her success partly to her well-rounded fitness routine. In the weeks leading up to an event, she’s doing strength and conditioning training, plus skill drills, six days a week. Core work is essential — “that's where your balance is coming from. That's where your power is also coming from,” she says. As is seeking out even the smallest opportunities to improve. “You can always get better with your punches. Like, I can always have a sharper jab, a faster jab, a stronger jab,” says Baumgardner. “With boxing, there's only four punches that you're throwing in different variations. If you can focus on your speed, your power, your agility, those are the things that count and that I always try to improve on.”
But physical fitness isn’t the only — or most — important key to an electrifying performance. To Baumgardner, boxing is, above all, a mental game. “It's important that I take time and really prioritize my mental space, because ultimately, if that's off, everything else is off,” she says. She journals and prays, practices affirmations, and surrounds herself with people who reinforce a positive mindset.
“If people understood the time and effort and, again, mental [strength] that goes into a sport like boxing, they would appreciate it more,” says Baumgardner. “...It's only you in there fighting. You can have the best trainer in the world, and it's still up to you to decide how you're going to fight that next round, or how you're going to get up after you get knocked down. Those things all require your mental [strength] and how strong your belief is in yourself. A lot of people lack that because it's hard — and it is hard — but there's so much joy and success on the other side.”
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The future looks bright. The Madison Square Garden event, presented by Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Productions, drew an average-minute audience of nearly six million viewers from around the world, Netflix reports. In 2025, women’s sports are projected to generate $2.35 billion in revenue globally, up 25 percent from last year’s record-breaking $1.88 billion, according to ESPN.
Baumgardner hopes that, as an athlete with influence (she boasts 711,000 followers on Instagram alone), she’s able to make the sport better for the next generation of boxers, whether by speaking up about unjust pay or throwing punches on millions of TV screens. “Now these girls are able to say, you know, ‘I could fight on Netflix one day. I can fight at Madison Square Garden,’” she says, “but they have to see it first to even believe it.”
If seeing is believing, Baumgardner is making sure women know they can be both “a beauty and a beast.” You can wear down your opponents with jabs, crosses, and body shots — and do it in rhinestones. “You can be strong. You can be a woman. You can put your make-up on,” she adds. “I can put my heels on and gloves on, and it doesn't make me anything different. It makes me better.”