People

Eye of the Hurricane

Boxer Julaton Doesn’t Pull Any Punches

    And in this corner, meet Alameda-trained boxer, martial arts instructor and Filipino American, Ana “The Hurricane” Julaton. In person, she is talkative and welcoming. She has long black hair, a spotless face and a beautiful smile. At 5-foot-5 and 125 pounds, she’s seems petite for a pugilist. But she’s anything but a pushover.
    In 2007, Julaton, 27, was the fourth-ranked woman boxer in the country in the amateur bantamweight division. She began boxing only in 2004, at the invitation of a West-Wind Bok Fu School instructor. Since then, she’s risen quickly in the amateur boxing ranks. “It usually takes 10 years for boxers to get to where she’s gotten in three years,” says her manager, Angelo Reyes.
    So far, 2006 has been her most successful year, with Julaton winning the San Francisco Golden Gloves, the San Francisco Diamond Belt Championship and the California State Police Athletic League Championships. Her success has garnered her local and national media attention.
    Julaton says her biggest influence is the team at West-Wind, including Reyes, owner Chris Thompson and vice president Keith Sheppard, who is Julaton’s martial arts teacher. “We saw a lot of potential and drive in her early on, which are things you need to be a boxer, too,” says Sheppard, a former boxer.
    In 2006, the school backed up its belief in Julaton’s amateur boxing career with a $40,000 sponsorship. “Boxing is her job. It’s a good time for her to do it. She has no distractions [family or kids],” says Sheppard. And everyone stands to benefit if she does well.
    Born and raised in Daly City, where she still resides, Julaton came to the East Bay after her hometown West-Wind school closed. Since 1999, she’s been a Bok Fu student at West-Wind Bok Fu schools in Alameda and Berkeley. At the West-Wind school on Park Street, she met Bok Fu instructor Elsie Kulsel, who became a role model.
    Bok Fu, or Way of the White Tiger, is a branch of martial arts that has its origins in ancient Chinese Kung Fu. Modern Bok Fu draws on many styles of martial arts including ancient Bok Fu, Kung Fu, Karate, Jujitsu, Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do. She helps instruct 400 students in Alameda and Berkeley, though she cut back her teaching to concentrate on boxing training at the Berkeley West-Wind school, where there’s a boxing ring. But her boxing and her black belt in Bok Fu weren’t accidents—just the latest undertaking for someone who won national titles in Tae Kwon Do as a teenager. “My dad got me started in martial arts when I was 10,” she says. 
    Julaton worked hard as an amateur boxer to get women’s boxing included in the 2008 summer Olympics, but the International Olympic Committee excluded it, and the sport probably won’t be included in 2012, either. That fact, and her experience at the U.S. Championships in Colorado Springs in June 2007 (where was the featherweight silver medalist), helped Julaton decide to turn professional. “I was in the weigh-in with the other girls, and some of them were out of shape and just not impressive. I thought, ‘This is who we’re sending out to represent women’s amateur boxing?’ ”
    Julaton and her team wasted no time in choosing an experienced promoter to land her first professional bout. She signed with Golden Boy Promotions Inc., champion boxer Oscar De La Hoya’s company, and has come under the tutelage of Freddie Roach, a former boxer, De La Hoya’s trainer and the man who guides Julaton’s idol and fellow Filipino boxer, Manny Pacquiao.
    “Ana has a fast jab, a great right—a very strong and quick right. She has very good power in her left hook and solid fundamentals,” Roach told reporters while Julaton was training with him in Los Angeles in 2006.
    Roach landed her a professional debut in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in October, but due to various circumstances, the fight was cancelled. Reyes says Julaton will continue to train with Roach, and other fight offers are coming in, anticipating her pro debut soon.
    Despite the promise of big paychecks, there are tradeoffs and dangers to professional boxing Julaton has to consider. Amateurs have big gloves and protective headgear while professionals have small gloves and no headgear. If you get hit in the head, it can really hurt you, and repeated blows can cause brain damage. But Julaton enjoys the challenges of boxing, both mental and physical. Her training regimen is rigorous and intensifies before big fights. It includes running sprints, doing calisthenics, working on the punching bag, shadowboxing and jumping rope. She also has to maintain her weight and watch what she eats. “It can be a full-time job itself,” she says, adding that she counts her mind as her greatest strength.
    Julaton says there are many obstacles outside the ring for a woman boxer. Boxing remains a male-dominated sport; women’s boxing still isn’t widely accepted, and women’s boxing magazines include ads of scantily clad women or models posing as boxers. The Ring magazine, the self-billed “Bible of the sport,” doesn’t cover women’s boxing at all. But Julaton’s been working to get it taken seriously. “Change doesn’t happen overnight. You’ve got to be patient. I probably won’t see the change in my generation,” she says.
    She got her nickname “The Hurricane,” she says, because after bouts people called her flurry of punches hurricane-like, and when people kept pronouncing her last name incorrectly (it’s HOO-luh-tin), she went with it. It’s a name she wears proudly on the back of her boxing trunks, with the American and Philippine flags on the front. Her Filipino heritage is something she carries in her heart and into the ring, resulting in a significant Filipino fan base.
    Julaton may throw punches for a living, but she has her own MySpace page just like other 20-something women. To see clips of her in action, or to send her a message, go to www.myspace.com/ajthehurricane.