i’m becoming a pro boxer because of izzy daniels

i started taking boxing classes this summer because of my childhood celebrity crush.

When I was a small child I was utterly and totally in love with Corbin Bleu. Specifically, Bleu as Izzy Daniels in “Jump In”. Specifically when he was boxing. Specifically that one scene where Rodney wanted to fight him but Izzy was Preaching Peace and kept doing backflips away from him.

Because of this life-altering crush, I’ve had a lifelong affinity towards boxing. I had never gone to a boxing gym before but I often think about, on long plane rides staring out the window, what my life would look like if I were a professional boxer. I also regularly go into my father’s office while he is doing his accounting work and shadow box his head.

Despite being 22 and never having boxed before, I have a god complex when it comes to anything athletics related and believe that if I really wanted to, I could totally become a professional boxer. However confident I may be though, this dream would never happen for two major reasons:

1. I am terrified of being hit in the head!!! I already went through a two-year long concussion recovery that I am not quite over (motion sickness is a bitch) and don’t particularly want to relive.

2. My mother would never let that happen. One time someone hit a field hockey ball up into my face while I was guarding a free hit. Luckily the ball hit my facemask and didn’t do any damage, but she has never forgotten about it.

However, in my current post-grad life I am finding that I have more time to try out different things and get back into my old hobbies that I could not complete when I was taking 18 hours and working four jobs. So despite spending the majority of my day's job searching and networking and cold emailing people, I also force myself to take some time out of the day in attempts to have fun. And in the opening montage when Izzy Daniels was prancing and flipping and jiving all around Brooklyn, he did look like he was having a blast.

This summer I signed up for a boxing membership at a gym just down the street from my house, close enough that I was thinking about biking there. But then I remembered how many people I know who live on the street I would ride there on and how I have been dutifully hiding out from people I went to high school with, so I decided to drive there instead. My brother went with me to a class for the first time in late July.

The experience was almost everything I dreamed it to be!! I say almost, because the rest of the class was filled with sweaty, inexperienced boxers and not Izzy Daniels. The workers showed us the hand wraps, where I was able to pick out bright pink wraps, then they wrapped our hands for us and helped us put on boxing gloves.

After the class when the instructor came over to us and said, “Wow! Usually people are sucking for air after their first class and can’t get the punching patterns down. You guys did well!”

I smiled and nodded quietly but in my head I was retorting, “Of course I did.”

As many times as I watched “Jump In” as a child (and an adult) my brother had to watch it with me. Although I doubt he had a crush on Bleu. Maybe Keke Palmer. Will have to ask and get back to you on that.

When we got back home my brother said, “Go show dad what we learned.”

I ran into his office and vigorously shadow boxed him, as I had done before, but this time far more professionally. This time I could yell out the punches I was throwing as I was throwing them, “Jab! Jab! Cross! Uppercut! Lead hook! Jab! Uppercut!”

That night I looked up Corbin Bleu for the first time in years to see what he is up to now. It appears he is still prancing and flipping and jiving all around New York City, but now it’s more on Broadway and less on the streets of Brooklyn.

The next time I went to the boxing gym was by myself and I was running late and frantic because I was stuck in construction traffic and still needed help wrapping my hands. I ran into the gym and asked the first worker I saw to help me with my bright pink wraps. The gym was more crowded this time, since it was a Sunday morning, and people were watching and listening in on our conversation as they waited for the class to start.

The worker was a woman who looked like the epitome of “boxer girl.” She had tattoos up and down her extremely muscular arms and her outfit looked exactly like something a real boxer would wear, down to the shoes. Her hair was even in boxer braids. As she wrapped my hands she started asking me questions, which I answered quickly as I was still in a frantic state of mind. 

“This isn’t your first time boxing, is it?” She asked.

I shook my head, “I’ve been here once before.”

“What day did you come before this?”

“Just this past Thursday,” I responded.

“What made you want to start boxing?”

“Well I –”

Stop!!! How was I supposed to tell this woman, an actual badass boxer woman, that I had initially wanted to box because of my enormous childhood crush on Izzy Daniels? I almost admitted it too since I was on frantic autopilot. 

I stuttered over my words, my brain blank on what to say to her next as a good, fake, reason as to why I wanted to start boxing that wasn’t just “attractive boy boxer.”

Eventually I said, “I just know it’s really good exercise!”

Which was a pathetic answer and she did not ask me any other questions after that.

As I was boxing in class that day, I continued to think about the interaction, which reminded me about a girl I had known my junior year of college.

My friend Blakely and I took a hip hop class at our university gym offered by two other students. We got to be really good friends with both of them as my university had no community and Blakely and I were always the only two people in the class. One evening after class we decided to get dinner together and as we were sitting there they started talking about movies they liked. Blakely, who knew me the best, said, “She doesn’t know any movies. She hasn’t seen any movies except “Jump In”.”

The female instructor, Jayla, yelled, “I love that movie!!!” Which made me feel validated when Blakely was trying to make fun of me. “Even though it’s about boxing and double dutch, there was a lot of dancing in it. And that’s the movie that made me get into hip hop!”

Jayla admitted it so gracefully. To this day I still don’t know if she had a crush on Izzy Daniels (I mean, how could she not?) or if she just really liked the movie. Jayla made it seem like I could have easily responded to the boxing gym woman, “I just saw this boxing movie and it looked like a great time so I wanted to try.”

And with that response she would probably think I was talking about “Rocky” or “Creed” and not the Disney Channel hit from 2007.

However, that answer still doesn’t satisfy me completely.

Jayla has since temporarily dropped out of university to pursue a dance and acting opportunity she had in Australia. Therefore if she met Corbin Bleu and told him that his movie influenced her to start hip hop and invited him to one of her professional dance performances, he would probably be very impressed and feel special he had that kind of impact on someone’s life.

However, if I met Corbin Bleu and told him that “Jump In” had influenced me to start boxing and then I promptly started shadowboxing him while yelling out “Jab! Jab! Cross! Uppercut! Lead hook! Jab! Uppercut!” in the same manner I do to my father, he would most likely not be impressed nor would he feel special, and his security would probably then make me feel like a very inadequate fighter.

After all of this discussion, I’m really feeling like watching “Jump In” again. Might do that tonight. I am the girl I’ve always been!

Yours truly,

Calihan