Knockout in ring, on stage

Allison Porter has a sash and tiara, and the newly crowned Miss Washington has her evening gown and swimsuit packed for a September trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey and the Miss America Pageant.
But for next week’s trip to Spokane, she’s only packing gloves.
The 24-year-old from Seattle is entered in the 2004 U.S. Women’s National Boxing Championships, which runs July 27-31 at the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds.
If the image of a woman stepping into a boxing ring to compete for a gold medal, then walking the Boardwalk and competing for Miss America’s crown makes you stop and think, then Porter is pleased.
“I don’t like to be put into a box,” Porter said Monday at a press conference to promote the tournament. “I don’t want anyone to look at me and think ‘Okay, I have this person figured out.’ I like them to get to who I really am.
“By having these two things, this dichotomy of pageants and boxing together, it makes people think twice. It makes them educate themselves. What is the Miss America organization? What is amateur boxing? Are they what I thought they were just from watching television? Or is there more to it?”
There definitely is more to Allison Porter.
The 119-pound boxer graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2002 with degrees in astronomy and astrophysics. Admitted to the University of Washington Medical School, Porter has put her studies on hold while she carries out her Miss Washington duties.
She not only works as a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, she’s co-author of the graduate textbook, “Immunogenetics of Autoimmune Disease,” and a research paper to be published by a medical journal devoted to arthritis and rheumatism.
So, why does someone who will one day help cure a disease take up the sweet science?
“I started as a college student,” Porter explained. “I tried to walk onto my varsity soccer team and didn’t make it. I played JV soccer and the season ended after two months. After that I got on a treadmill and wondered if I had to do this for 10 months to keep in shape. I kept walking past a boxing gym every day on my way to practice, so one day I popped my head in.”
At first, it was the workout that kept Porter returning to the gym. But there’s a passion in Allison Porter that you overlook if you just focus on the tailored suit and the pageant-honed poise. When she talks about boxing the fire flickers in her eyes.
“One of my instructors competed and I was really inspired by her and decided to give it a shot,” Porter said. “I thought I would give it one shot, let it be my last hurrah and then move onto the next sport. Maybe triathlons would be my next thing.
“I put it all together and entered a tournament. I didn’t win, but I had an awesome time. I ended up staying in it and have been doing it ever since.”
That one event was the Golden Gloves tournament in Lowell, Mass., which regularly draws 3,000 boxers.
The competition, the camaraderie and the challenge set the hook.
Porter won the Tacoma Golden Gloves earlier this year, beating Spokane’s Andrea Kallas. Kallas returned the favor at the regional tournament in the Tri-Cities in April.
“Allison is the toughest competitor I’ve fought,” Kallas said. “She’s not in this tournament, she’s going to do well.”
A rematch between the two women obviously would be a promoter’s dream, but in the world of amateur women’s boxing, nothing will be certain until Monday night, when organizers get a final list of entrants. As an open tournament, any licensed amateur fighter can enter.
One would think that Miss Washington Pageant officials would put up a fight before allowing one of their own to enter a boxing tournament. If they did, it was just another foe to lose going head-to-head with Porter.
“They were pretty scared, but it was also an opportunity for me to break down a stereotype,” she said. “I told them that I’d been boxing for six years and I’ve never incurred an injury. When I played soccer, I was always hurt – sore muscles, bruises and ligaments and every thing. In boxing there’s so much focus on safety because we know how dangerous it is.
“I told them I wasn’t going to get hurt, and even if I did, I would be healed by the time the pageant came around. It’s the same thing here. If I get hurt, I have five weeks before I have to go back to Atlantic City. But I don’t plan on getting hurt.”
But she might hurt the next person to call Miss America a “Beauty Pageant.”
“There are a lot of people who still call it a ‘Beauty Pageant,’ ” she said. “It’s not that. We’ve moved past that. Not all pageants have done that, but Miss America has. That’s been a big part of it.”
But don’t expect her to go three rounds with Miss New Jersey during the talent competition, either. For that she plans to show off her skills as a classically trained violinist.
But she will carry a good deal of her boxing lessons onto the Boardwalk – especially her self-respect.
“That’s one of the first things that ties over from boxing to pageants,” she said. “It takes so much self-respect to get into the ring. Same thing to get on that stage in front of hundreds and thousands of people. You have to deal with your own insecurities to do that. You have to develop that kind of respect. And you have to develop that same kind of respect for the people you’re competing against. I think that’s an important lesson for you kids and maturing adults to learn.”
So, which is scarier: stepping into the ring to fight for a national championship, or competing for Miss America?
“Boxing,” Porter laughs. “In a pageant they aren’t out to hurt you.”
Don’t be too sure.