The First Lady of Boxing

Background:

“If I find a fighter who I thought was championship-material, I would make time.” Jackie Kallen

Jackie Kallen, also known as “The First Lady of Boxing,” was one of the first female managers to gain success in the male-dominated world of professional boxing. In her heyday, she brought James Toney the 1991 WBA world Middleweigh title and Bronco McKart the 1994 WBO world Jr. Middleweight title, among other prestigious accomplishments. She also won many awards and honors and was nominated for Manager of the Year Award twice. In honor of Kallen, director Charles S. Dutton developed a motion picture based on her life, Against the Ropes (2004), which starred Meg Ryan. There she also appeared as a female journalist.

North America's most famous female boxing promoter, Kallen previously worked as a showbiz journalist for a magazine in her native Detroit. She also served as a sports reporter, and more recently, in 2005, was a consultant for the reality TV series “The Contender.”

The Los Angeles resident has been voted “Youth Sports Coordinator” for the LA County Sheriff Department. She visits many areas where there are young-at-risk and establishes boxing gyms. A motivational speaker, she also goes to churches and schools to speak to kids and urges them to leave the gangs and go to the gym. Kallen participates in charities like PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) and battered womens shelters. She is the author of “Hit Me with Your Best Shot: A Fight Plan for Dealing with All of Life's Hard Knocks” (1997) and is the former commissioner of the International Female Boxers Association.

Journalist

Childhood and Family:

Jackie Kaplan, who would later be popular as Jackie Kallen, was born in 1946 in Detroit. She grew up in a middle-class Jewish family and was educated at Schulze Elementary and Mumford High School.

At age 20, Jackie married Gary, and after having two children, she started her journalism career in a magazine. She currently is the grandmother of two young boys and lives happily with her husband in Los Angeles.

Against the Ropes

Career:

A boxing promoter, Jackie Kallen started her career as a show business journalist in the 1970s and she worked for a magazine. Her duties included interviewing a number of celebrities, among them Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley. During the 1977, Kallen was delegated to interview Thomas Hearns, the new boxing potential from the Kronk gym in Detroit, and after watching him performing on the ring, she fell in love with the sport and started working as a sports journalist. She wrapped up other sports, but focused in boxing.

Kallen's affiliation with Hearns continued when she accepted a job as Hearns' publicist, which she held for a decade. She became a popular personality in Detroit boxing scene, but such success was not without cost. Kallen frequently met with discrimination because at the time women's boxing was practically non existing, and there were many people, both men and women, who trusted that boxing was a sport that was solely for men to be involved in.

Kallen saw the phenomenon as a challenge and she became agitated with her opportunity to be related in boxing. With the arrival of heavyweight Bobby Hitz in 1988, she professionally made her debut as a boxing manager. Her first huge break came in 1991 when her fighter James Toney won the title of WBA world Middleweight. Toney

knocked out Michael Nunn in eleven rounds at Iowa, and he became Kallen's first world champion. She recalled, “I had been telling everyone that I was going to have a champion and people kind of snickered. When I did take (James Toney) off the street and turn him into a champion, they really looked at me a little bit differently.” Another of her combatants, Bronco McKart, picked up the WBO world Jr. Middleweight title in 1994, a accomplishment that cemented her status as one of the sport's first, and rather possibly most flourishing female managers.

Kallen's professional relationship with Toney created some controversy, but it did allow her to gain celebrity among boxing's hard-core fans. She began to appear on articles in magazines like Ring and KO Magazine, with the focus of her articles being her manager-boxer relationship with the world Middleweight champion. On many occasions, she disclosed that their relationship was like mother and son, but there were uncontrolled rumors that the two did not get along well behind the scenes. They maintained an on-and-off friendship until the late 1990s, when the bond broke up. By this period, Kallen had been diagnosed with both cancer and heart disease. She recovered after undergoing three surgeries, and is now in her good health.

In 2004, Kallen was featured as a female reporter in Charles S. Dutton's film, Against the Ropes, which based on her true life. In the biopic, she was portrayed by actress Meg Ryan. A year later, she could be seen working as a consultant for Mark Burnett's new reality TV series “The Contender,” along side Sylvester Stallone, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Awards:
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