Honesty in boxing is often viewed as a flaw as serious and detrimental as having a weak chin, slow feet, or a moral compass. Seldom, in fact, will you hear a boxer be completely honest about either their training camp or their concerns ahead of a fight and only on special occasions will they drop the façade and deliver a version of the truth in the aftermath of one. Even then, however, honesty on the part of the loser is usually a synonym for justification – that is, an excuse – and should be seen as merely an attempt to save face rather than reveal one.
In the ring, that’s a different story. In the ring, you find boxers at their most vulnerable and therefore at their most honest. They have no choice but to be honest in that moment for the very nature of the sport demands it of them, flushing out dishonesty shortly after the first bell tolls and the last lie is told. In that sense to enter a ring is no different than entering a confessional, or being interrogated under oath. It soon all comes to light.
Up to that point, and after that point, a boxer can rarely be trusted. To box at all they must tell themselves that they will be one of the lucky ones and that getting punched in the head will not necessarily lead to damage and problems further down the line. They then allow their guard to lower only when the fighting is over and they no longer need to maintain the pretence in order to convince both themselves and others they are something they are not.
In other words, if you want to see a boxer at their most honest, catch them either in the process of fighting or, better yet, when liberated in the relative safety of retirement. It is in retirement, of course, that the fighting is done and the ones truly content have nothing left to prove. It is in retirement a boxer permits the transition back to being human, considering it for once not a weakness, or some kind of defeat.
If anything, this transition to civilian life is vital in terms of finding contentment in retirement. Without it, a retired boxer, even one whose goal has been achieved, will tend to struggle, perhaps missing the days when their humanity, and all the real problems in life, could be concealed by both their dishonesty and the requirements of their trade. Sometimes, to avoid responsibility, or the truth, it’s easy to just keep playing.
With this in mind, the recent retirement of Seniesa Estrada, the women’s minimumweight champion, could not have been a decision taken lightly. At 32, and still unbeaten, Estrada seemingly had the world at her feet, at least in boxing terms, and had, like any boxer, done her utmost to shield the public from what we now know is the truth. She was, to all intents and purposes, an undisputed champion whose future was as bright and winning as her smile. Not only that, as the women’s game continues to evolve, she appeared closer to the start than the end, ready now to reap the rewards having toiled for so long in obscurity.
Then, on October 23, Estrada, 26-0 (9), suddenly announced her retirement and people started to wonder why. Compared with other fighters who have retired unbeaten, this one felt different. In those cases, think Floyd Mayweather or Joe Calzaghe, the fighter in question had outstayed their welcome or shown small signs of regression. With Estrada, however, there were no such signs, at least from the outside.
Yet that is the thing. So good was Estrada as both a boxer and actor, she could keep the world at bay, on the end of her jab. She could give the world a version of herself they needed and wanted, all the while keeping her old self, her true self, locked away in a basement at home. There for years, it would seem, the first time any of us were even aware of its existence arrived a week after Estrada’s retirement announcement when she sat down for a surprisingly honest and moving interview with Top Rank’s Crystina Poncher. It was during this interview that Estrada explained the part depression had played in her retirement, as well as revealed sides to her she had previously ensured were never in shot.
“It’s not easy to talk about,” she said of her retirement. “It’s a difficult decision. I didn’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘I feel like retiring.’ There’s been a lead up to it for the past few years. Now that I finally am retired, I feel very at peace and happy. It’s a feeling that I haven’t felt in a very long time.”
Having posted her retirement statement online, Estrada then got on with her day. This meant she continued learning lines for a scene she was due to deliver at an acting class that day before later arriving at this class to be greeted by her coach. Asked on arrival if she was okay, Estrada proceeded to break down in tears, after which the acting coach said, quite rightly, she could be in no better place to express this level of emotion. Acting, after all, is as much an outpouring of emotion as a fight between two people. The words are rehearsed, yes, just like punches in the gym, but everything between the words, as well as both before and after the words, is a truth even the world’s greatest actors are unable to protect.
“I’ve been boxing for 23 years and people on the outside looking in look at a fighter and think everything’s okay,” said Estrada. “Twenty-three years is a very long time and it was 23 years of a struggle to make it and get where I am today. I spent my whole childhood and teenage years – and of course as a young adult as well – fighting and striving to get to this point, thinking I was going to be so happy and so excited; thinking that the money is what I wanted.
“For so many years I did it because I loved it, whether I was making money or not, but of course every fighter works hard to get to the point where they can make great money. You think when you get to that point you’re going to be happy and everything’s going to be great, but when I got to that point I still wasn’t happy.
“I knew that mentally I just couldn’t handle it anymore. It was 20 years of depression and anxiety more than happiness. There were happy moments throughout my career, but after feeling depression for so long, mentally you just hit a breaking point where you’re like, I just can’t do this anymore.”
In addition to her melancholy, there was also immense physical pain, severe enough to stop Estrada pretending even if pretending had been her aim. Her scoliosis, for example, or curved spine, had troubled her since her teenage years and continued to trouble her on a daily basis. More recently, too, she had to contend with a torn ligament in a finger on her right hand, which again only made it more difficult to continue playing dress-up and wear the smile of a clown. In truth, she couldn’t even make a fist.
“I tried to ignore it for so long and thought to myself, That’s sissy stuff,” she said. “You’re depressed and feeling anxiety, just keep fighting through it, don’t tell anybody. There were a lot of times when I thought people wouldn’t understand.
“Boxing is 99 per cent mental, one per cent physical. You can be 100 per cent physically ready for a fight but if you’re going into the ring not mentally there, that can take away everything.”
This we have been told since time immemorial, of course, usually by men keen to reinvent themselves or reveal just enough of their character without crumbling before the mirror entirely. Yet, when hearing Estrada go on to divulge the depths of her despair, there was a truer sense of what it means to be honest in the sport of boxing. This, rest assured, was not another boxer using mental health as a way of either deflecting, promoting, buying sympathy, or excusing a recent transgression. Instead, Estrada was throughout the interview giving parts of herself to the public in a manner beneficial only to her freedom and peace of mind. This was honesty to heal, not to curry favour.
“It took me a long time to admit to myself that there was this depression breaking me down,” she said, “and it’s because of everything: the struggle of wanting to be a world champion; the struggle of wanting to make good money; everything that comes with being not just a fighter but a female fighter. It was very draining mentally.
“There were times – and I’ve never talked about this – when after my last three or four fights, before getting into camp for the next fight, I would drink a bottle of wine every night just so I could fall asleep easier and not think about the decision and not think about feeling depressed or feeling anxiety. I would do that almost every single night. I wasn’t even going out and partying or anything. I was just doing it by myself. I didn’t want to be around anybody. I was doing it alone, at home. That was going on for a while until I got back in training camp. I was smoking weed, too, to not feel that anxiety and depression, and I thought to myself one day, Right, this can get worse. This is going to lead you down a dark path.”
To be able to see that, and not succumb to the urge to remain in a numb, dishonest and darkening state, is a far greater achievement than anything Seniesa Estrada has or could have ever achieved in the boxing ring. Because if the ring is widely considered a place of honesty in the context of sport, still it pales in comparison to the questions one is asked on scarier, lonelier battlefields, those without an opponent, referee, or audience to impress. It is in those moments, when at home and alone, you find out what it really means to be honest. It is in those moments the only person you can try to deceive is the one person aware of every telltale sign.