#7-year-old boxer Ruby Tucker packs a punch

Float like a butterfly, sting like a second-grader. 

“My favorite punches are the uppercut and the hook,” said Ruby Tucker, a 7-year-old boxer coming in at 47 pounds, standing at about 4 feet. “I hope to be a professional boxer one day, like Laila Ali. She moves forward a lot, and uses one-twos when she does.” 

The pint-size athlete hones her boxing skills three to four days a week with her dad and trainer, Kijuan Tucker, who hopes to one day turn his tiny Tyson into a pro. 

“I was just a big fan of the sport,” said Tucker, 36, who noticed his daughter’s strength and agility at the age of 3 and decided to start training her informally after watching YouTube videos to get a sense of best practices. “She has a natural, effortless form.”

A typical training day starts like this: Ruby wakes up at 6:30 a.m. and eats a healthy breakfast of toast, fruit and juice — “There’s no soda in her diet, and we try and limit the candy,” said Tucker. Then, she’s off to spar with her dad for about an hour and fifteen minutes in a park near the family’s home in South Brunswick, NJ. “We work on footwork, head movement, defense and jabs. We love throwing jabs,” said the proud father of one. After a half-hour or so of cool-down time, it’s off to virtual elementary school. 

Inspired by his work with his daughter, Tucker recently founded Zilla Boxing Club, a youth boxing gym. Over the summer, he started training other local kids in the park, and then made the move to secure a brick-and-mortar facility in Elizabeth, NJ, which is set to open later this month. Packages range from $30 per week to a $100 monthly membership, which covers small group classes.

Tucker said he hopes recent exhibition fights like Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr., plus a “resurgence in combat sports” like MMA and UFC fighting, will get kids pumped about boxing. He also anticipates that after months of being cooped up during the pandemic, parents will be eager to sign up their tots for activities that will help them release pent-up energy.

Ruby said she’s got her peers in her corner. “My friends think it’s really cool that I box, and I teach them moves.”

The featherweight is committed to her sport. She studies videos of her idols, who include welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr., Muhammad Ali, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Always looking to improve, she’s currently focused on footwork, which her dad described as “her Achilles’ heel.” “When she learned to walk, she walked on her toes,” said Tucker, who added that she had to wear braces to help with the problem.

Now, with the help of a weekly private dance class, she shuffles, slides and pivots with ease in the videos her dad posts to social media, to some 31,000 followers. Ruby has her own account, too, and has nearly 10,000 fans.

Since the tough-guy sport involves a lot of gear, the Tuckers have had to amass youth-size versions of gloves, mouthpieces, hand wraps, head guards, striking sticks, pads and heavy bags to properly train. Still, spars in Ruby’s category are hard to come by for now. According to USA Boxing’s official rules, young kids can start in the PeeWee division at age 8, so Ruby can’t box competitively until after her next birthday.

But the senior Tucker isn’t worried about titles just yet. He’s focused on fitness and fun, and said the rough-and-tumble pastime has plenty to offer beyond belts. “Boxing encompasses everything about life; you get knocked down, you get back up,” said Tucker. “The corner is your family, and the ring is life, and you have to face your opponent.”

And he said the violence of the sport at its highest levels just comes with the territory. “Look, we’re not baking cookies,” said Tucker. “We watch the matches, and they can be brutal, but I present it as a sport, just like football is.”

He says he’s not worried about raising an aggressor, either, and argues that boxing is as much a mental practice as a physical one. “I’m training my daughter to always talk her way through conflicts,” said Tucker. “But if a bully backs you into a corner, you stand tall and do what you have to do.” 

But for Ruby, boxing is still all about family bonding.

“I like spending time with my dad,” she said.