This is the fistic fairy tale of Grace and Tommy.
Both have trained at Drake’s and Saturday night they each fought bouts on the Knocktoberfest outdoor boxing show in front of the downtown gym.
At a similar event last October, they simply were stablemates on the undercard. This time they were a joyous couple whose perfect walk-to-the-ring song would have been that bouncy old B-52′s hit with the infectious refrain: “Love shack, baby, love shack.”
And if you listened to other folks in the gym on fight night, you heard how the pair soon may be much more than just boyfriend and girlfriend.
Tommy Nguyen — a former Beavercreek High soccer player and track athlete who is now a barista at Winan’s Fine Chocolates and Coffees — has trained at the gym for four years and, for the past 18 months or so, has worked as a coach there.
Grace Ashworth — a graphic design artist for James Free Jewelers on Far Hills Ave. who came out of Ohio University with a degree in fine arts and magna cum laude honors — was living in downtown Dayton a year ago and happened to walk past the gym the E. Fifth Street during a Hits and Mitts training session in the parking lot.
Growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., she had played volleyball and lacrosse in high school, but never been involved in contact sports. Intrigued though, she ventured into the fight club and said she was greeted warmly:
“Everyone was supportive. It was great to be part of a gym — a community — that doesn’t treat women as inferior. It felt like a family.”
Soon after Grace first stepped into the gym, I wrote a story about the three Asian boxers training there: Tommy, Grace and the charismatic Hyde Li, an engineer at Fuyao Glass America in Moraine, who was raised in China, came to Gulfport, Mississippi, as a 5-foot, 17-year-old exchange student and went on to get an undergrad degree at the University of Alabama and complete grad school at the University of Dayton.
After the story appeared in the newspaper, Grace, who also was born in China, thought up a way to find out more about Tommy, who she’d noticed in the gym, but did not know.
“The way I got his number was pretty clever, I think,” she said with a laugh. “I told Hyde,’ You should put you, me and Tommy in a group chat so we can talk about the article.’”
Soon after that, John Drake, who runs the gym, asked Tommy to train Grace.
“He told me not to throw (punches) back at her,” Tommy remembered.
“It was my first time sparring!” Grace said with mock exasperation, before laughing: “I got to ‘wham’ on him!”
Tommy nodded: “Yeah, but when I finally was allowed to throw back, I was so happy!”
Grace said she’d been alluding that she was interested in him as more than just a training partner, but he “never took the hint.”
Tommy laughed and nodded: “All those hints kept going right over my head.”
Finally, Grace said she landed the line that put his imperception down for the count:
“You’re supposed to hit on me ... not hit me!”
Boxing confidence
Grace said she was abandoned in an orphanage in China as a baby and was adopted by an American couple at age one. She said throughout her life, her parents have been supportive of her endeavors and that includes when she took up boxing because they saw what it did for her.
“Boxing can be a threatening sport when you’re in the ring, all by yourself, and you’re literally getting punched,” she said. “But I enjoyed the empowerment I got knowing I’d learned to fight back. It brought out a real confidence in myself I didn’t know I had.”
She said Tommy helped that emerge:
“He’s very supportive but he also knows when to push me. He’s very attuned to what I need, so as a result I feel better about myself.
“And he’s just a good person. He’s really funny and makes me laugh like no one else can. I feel we have some good energy together. I feel that I’m the best version of myself when I’m around him.”
As for Tommy, he was a little more succinct when it came to assessing Grace:
“She’s feisty. She’s fun. She makes me happy.”
Fight night
Grace moved to Jersey City, N.J. about three months ago to be closer to her family and now mostly works her job here remotely.
She returned to Dayton this past weekend to see Tommy and her friends and to fight on the Knocktoberfest card.
“I miss Dayton a lot,” she said. “And this fight was something I was looking forward to. Even though I’m in New Jersey, I want to continue boxing and I trained there a lot for this bout because last year I knew my opponent. I’d sparred with her beforehand.
“This year I didn’t know anything about who I was fighting.”
She was matched against Yang “Carol” Service, a 34-year-old systems engineer for Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions. It was her first time in the ring and she and Grace — who had Tommy working her corner — put on a spirited, three-round effort.
Later in the show Tommy fought Lewisburg’s Austin Pitcock, who had a large and vocal cheering section. Early in the first round, Tommy lost a contact and had trouble seeing out of one eye after that, a handicap Pitcock exploited.
Grace sat ringside just below Tommy’s corner and sensed something wasn’t right:
“He didn’t look as aggressive as usual. It was definitely scary seeing him get hit so hard, but at the same time I’m very confident in him and what he can do out there.”
After the fight she huddled with him as he sat on an oversized tire lying on its side in the center of Drake’s gym. And then she gave him a kiss.
That prompted a question about the romance rumors floating around the gym.
But while the pair may be amateur boxers, they suddenly were bobbing and weaving like pros.
“Well, we might be heading a certain direction,” Grace said with a laugh. “Everyone who gets in a relationship hopes that person is the one. And right now, I don’t have any negative thoughts that make me think otherwise. None at all.”
One more KO for Cupid.
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