PUNCHING HER
TICKET
Seattle-based boxer Kayla Floyd is pursuing a dream she hopes will lead to Olympic-level success
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID JAEWON OH
It was a couple years ago when I stumbled onto Seattle boxer Kayla Floyd as I was bopping around a sparring ring tucked into a tiny room in a community center in Tacoma. It was an organized event leading up to the local Golden Gloves tournament, a premier amateur boxing competition. It was sensory overload at its worst. And its finest.
Across from the gym, there was a basketball court where a youth tournament was in full swing, distant screams calling plays, encouragement from coaches and parents, whistles and buzzers echoing through the building. Balls bounced and sneakers squeaked. Then inside the gym, it was coaches yelling instructions, boxers grunting in their own rhythms with every punch during warm-ups and in the ring, the constant thud of leather gloves slamming against bags or bodies, and then more bells. The stench of gym bags and sweat clung to everything. And then, when I saw Kayla, it felt like time stopped. She also ended up stopping her sparring partner.
Kayla looked like one of those boxers who knew herself in the ring. She didn’t just punch for three minutes straight, which happens more often than you’d think. She seemed to calculate each punch, one after another, knowing when to slip, when to move, when to strike back. The chaos that filled the gym seemed to settle around her. Boxers started lining up around the ring, watching: instinctively reacting, oohs and wows, whenever her fists landed cleanly. You squinted at the violence, marveling at the mastery, the technicality of it. The art in the martial art. The science in the sweet science — even if it’s always a little hard to wrap your head around why getting pummeled with leather fists is considered “sweet.”
I’ve gotten to know Kayla in the following years as a photographer often assigned to cover the region’s boxing community. It’s hard not to recognize the sheer talent found in someone like Kayla. I’ve seen her in and out of the ring: training, she hopes, for a spot on USA Boxing’s development team.
What’s been apparent throughout my time knowing her is how Seattle — its people, history, places — fuels Kayla’s motivation to dream big in one of the loneliest sports, even as city-level changes threaten Seattle’s vibrant boxing community.
THE FIGHTER
Growing up in the Central District and Georgetown, Kayla, 24, remembers her childhood in Seattle fondly. She recalls the crowds at the Original Philly’s on MLK, the regulars by the corner stores, and friends within walking distance.
She comes from a long line of athletes, notably her sister Stephanie Mitchell, who set the record for the most three-point shots made at Rainier Beach High School, a record that still stands today. Kayla’s first sport was basketball, too, but she started boxing at age 16 under the tutelage of Ann Bailey at Cappy’s in Capitol Hill.
Nowadays, Kayla’s day typically starts at 4 a.m., when most people are asleep. Her life stretches across Seattle, from Lake City, where she lives, to Rainier Beach, where she trains. She follows a tight regimen throughout the week: visiting her physical therapist, lifting weights, road works (running), and, obviously, boxing. All of that in addition to her day job, enrolling people in Medicaid around the Central District. Both her careers revolve around survival.
“Half of the people in the gym already know what it means to survive, so they can push with me,” Kayla told me. “They’ve already been in the ring, too, so they know what to do for me and what I can do for them.”
And she’s got a loving crew supporting her in and out of the ring. Her girlfriend helps her with meal prep, Kayla notes with a smile. Her parents are in her corner, too, along with a squad of managers and peers at her gym — a venue in the middle of fights of its own.
THE TRAINING GYM
Reign City Athletics Boxing Gym has gone through several iterations since its inception in 2011. It started at a gym space in an apartment complex in Lynnwood, then it made a number of moves across Seattle, including several locations across the Central District. The last time I checked before I met Kayla, they were on South Jackson Street, across from Quick Pack Food Mart and above a gym that’s no longer there. Now, it borrows space from another gym just a couple of streets away from Rainier Beach High School.
South Seattle has long stood as a home for many immigrant communities who found belonging: Japanese, Southeast Asian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and more. They share similar stories of refuge: leaving home, finding their footing and cadence, and passing that legacy down to their children. That history is being forgotten. Or more accurately, being replaced.
Old corner stores, like the ones Kayla remembers from her childhood, are turning into gentrified supermarkets bearing the names of big-tech conglomerates, where you don’t even have to pull out your wallet to buy bottled artisanal water — only for those stores to shutter, leaving residents with fewer places to shop for their meals. Community spaces, including gyms, are struggling as long-time residents are getting pushed out, leaving locals, and businesses, with uncertain paths forward.
To Troy Pangilinan, Reign City’s owner, having a permanent home would give the gym a level of stability it hasn’t had in a long time. But he also sees Reign City’s constant movement as a competitive advantage.
“It’s tough, but it gives us a bit of an edge. We seem mythical, almost,” he said. “I’ve seen it all, people getting our names wrong on bout sheets at tournaments: Rain City, Seattle Rain Boxing, I’ve seen it all. But I like that, because it feels like they don’t know what to expect from us, and it’s brought our team so much closer.”
After Ann Bailey moved from Cappy’s to Reign City, Kayla soon joined her, and she began competing in 2019. Following a pandemic-induced pause to her career, she returned in 2022, and has been steadily finding her groove since. Just this year, Kayla won both her local and regional Golden Gloves — though she won without fighting, as she had no opponents. Even so, she is quickly becoming one of the better boxers to represent the region.
On the day I visited Kayla’s training session, the community that Kayla and Troy both say powers them felt real. There were a little over a dozen people in the nightly class, ranging from pre-teens to moms and dads, from fitness enthusiasts to trained boxers like Kayla. All of them earnestly carved out their hour, lifting, shuffling their feet, punching, bobbing, weaving. Some moved more smoothly than others, but everyone showed up with intention.
THE SWEET SCIENCE
Despite its ferocity, Kayla’s fight comes from a place of love. For Kayla, boxing is not something that helps her to exert her anger or frustration but rather, it’s the “art” part in the martial art that she’s so fond of.
The sheer courage of putting yourself in an arena where violence and aggression are required, not just allowed, under the guise of a binding contract between two fighters: It’s emotionally unsettling and yet incredibly valiant. None of us likes to get hit. It makes you vulnerable. The feeling intensifies within the confines of a boxing ring, where you have to stay for the allotted time. It’s brutal while the clock is ticking, but the brutality sharpens when you’re pulled next to your opponent, a referee wedged between you, that split second where you don’t know if you’ve won or not. Or worse, when you know you’ve clearly lost and still have to go through the ritual of it all, your arm held down firmly by the referee.
Kayla describes herself as a laid-back, defensive boxer. The irony of being laid back in a sport where you are constantly risking a punch to the face is not lost on her. However, watching Kayla in the ring gives you a feeling that borders on tranquility and aggression. It’s like watching a surfer ride the waves nature gives them, remaining fearless in pursuit of triumph. She is patient enough to stay in her place, not revealing all of her arsenal at once as soon as the bell rings. She’s not a brawler, and yet she is a fighter because the moment she sees her opponent slip even a little, watch out: She’ll make them pay for it.
Not having enough opponents locally and regionally does hamper Kayla’s growth as a boxer, but it’s a problem other ambitious amateurs face in one of the loneliest sports. Boxing still has a limited talent pool at the elite level, which is where Kayla prefers to compete. As a result, she has her sights set on becoming a member of USA Boxing’s developmental team, where she can train with some of the best boxers in the country at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, and test herself on the international level, opening the door to Olympic competition down the road.
But to get there, she has to compete more, and that also means traveling around the country, throwing herself into one tournament after another while managing her day job, her training, and, most importantly, her money. If the sacrifices she has to make to chase this dream were only the hours she puts into the gym, it would almost be too easy. That’s only the beginning of it. Regardless, she remains hopeful, and, like the way she fights, patient. Carefully crafting her art, waiting for her opportunity, and never afraid to make her move when the moment calls for it.
There’s a level of selflessness in Kayla that comes through warmly. She has an insatiable desire to become a better boxer, eyes set on bigger things ahead, but she also understands that she’s not alone in it. She’s aware of her community, not just within the confines of the gym, but in the city that shaped her.
“Once you survive through it, it becomes second nature. I already know what I have to do to make the weight, to eat right, to sleep right, just to get myself on the right track. You see hard times, but you see your mom surviving, your dad surviving, your sister surviving, and you just follow suit,” Kayla said. “You grow up with it and realize, ‘This is what I have to do.’”
“UNTITLED” - NAHOM GHIRMAY, 2025
If I have to train out of their backyard, I will.
As the night went on, the class gave way to sparring. Some of the regulars headed home, while the more dedicated boxers stayed. Sparring is an odd thing: hitting your friends and teammates so they can get better. But it isn’t punishing. There’s a care to it. In the middle of exchanging punches, you stop to tell your partner how to land one better, or how to guard the next. A clean shot can earn genuine praise from the person you just hit. It’s controlled. Measured. But above all, there’s a deep care for your partner and the community binding you together.
Pangilinan sees “community” as a meaningful tenet, rather than marketing jargon. Having grown up in Columbia City and lived there his whole life, he wanted to make sure that he and his gym stayed available to anyone and everyone. He did not want to put a price on his community, even if that meant a risk to his business, because he wanted to keep the barrier to entry to the gym, and to the sport, as low as possible. Or, as he puts it, “You can always come home.”
That sense of home also carries a sense of safety for Kayla and other gymgoers. For Kayla, in the midst of constant change and the need for survival, the place where she can express herself through movement and a barrage of punches has become the place where she can grow, and to which she returns daily, even as the gym moves regularly from one location in the city to another.
“If I have to train out of their backyard, I will,” she said.
David Jaewon Oh is a Seattle-based photographer and writer whose work explores movement, community, and the ways people connect with their bodies. His work can be found in local and national newspapers and magazines.