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Marlow Blankenship fell in love with boxing as a child watching Muhammad Ali. She entered the ring for the first time this weekend at age 42, two years older than Ali when he retired from the sport.
The mother of four faced off against friend and fellow Boyds resident Barbara Bartolomeo, 44, at an amateur bout in Seat Pleasant on Saturday sanctioned by the Potomac Valley Association, the local USA Boxing committee for Washington, D.C., and Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Blankenship won the match by eight punches.
"The mental discipline that it takes impresses me," said Blankenship, also a competitive runner. "A lot of people think boxing is about going in there and kicking butt, and it is, but a lot of it is taking that physical aggression, pulling it back and fighting artfully."
Blankenship's passion for the sport was reignited two years ago when she learned kickboxing for her job as a fitness instructor at Washington Sports Club in Germantown. Bartolomeo, also a teacher at the Germantown gym, introduced her to a boxing instructor she worked with in the early 1990s to prepare for a boxing aerobics class she was leading.
"It started off as a fun thing and my friend was like, ‘Hey, you punch hard,'" said Blankenship, who also runs a hair salon out of her home. "It's been the most awesome ride of my life."
Blankenship threw herself into training six days a week and followed a strict diet. Several weeks ago she had two practice fights — one loss and one draw — against a woman she later learned is a champion boxer in Europe.
"She was just getting better and better," said her husband David Blankenship, 43, also a boxing fan. "One day I watched her box and I thought, ‘Good God, she could kick my ass now.'"
When Blankenship and her trainer, who was Sugar Ray Leonard's sparring partner for two years in the 1970s, decided she was ready for her first official match, they got bad news — the organizers couldn't find another lightweight female fighter in her age division. Bartolomeo had been training and sparring with Blankenship for two years to improve her skills and decided to step up and into the other corner.
"It seemed logical, it seemed right," said Bartolomeo, a black belt in tae kwon do and a mother of two. "We're both competitive, but I know at the end of it, regardless of who wins or loses, we'll hug each other after."
Blankenship began getting serious about fitness after the birth of her youngest child, now 11, and she said she hopes her transformation helps show other women that it's never too late to live their dreams.
"I want to motivate women over the age of 40," Blankenship said. "We're not dead, we can achieve our goals. Just because we're over 40 doesn't mean you have to fall into complacency."
