James Kirkland, Born Fighting

If James Kirkland fights with the desperation of a prison yard scuffle, it may be because he has some experience in the matter. If he fights like a man brawling to put food on the table, it's because he knows dearly what that's like. And if he tosses the art of boxing to the side like warmup robe on in favor of delivering the kind of punishment you might have to thumb back to Genesis to be familiar with, it's because that's the only thing he knows.

"When I'm in the ring I love to bring pain," says Kirkland (24-0, 21 KOs) who faces the hard-hitting Jorge Julio (34-2, 31 KOs) Saturday night on HBO's Boxing After Dark (10PM ET). "I want to make him hurt."
No, James Kirkland may never be a boxer.

Not in the conventional sense, in the way the romantics of the sport slip over the sweet science veneer like a plastic furniture cover.

He's a bull in boxing trunks and when he steps in the ring, the whole damn world is nothing but red.

No, he may not be a boxer, but he was born a fighter.

"I fight, that's the only way I know how," Kirkland says. "I'm fighting to change my circumstances for me and my family. I'm fighting for everything I've got every time I step in the ring."

Now 24-0 with 23 knockouts, Kirkland, 24, may already be the baddest man in the junior welterweight division. With shotgun power in both hands and a come-forward style that makes you think he might've learned to fight on a train track, Kirkland is as entertaining a prospect as there is in boxing.

"He got speed when he wanna have it, he's got punching power, he can take a punch," Pops Billingsley, his trainer said on HBO's Ring Life series. "He got the whole package."

His training methods can only generously be called spartan, running in sand in Army boots, punching the heavy bag off the front of a moving truck.

"It's an ultra-man training camp," Kirkland says. "I push my body to the limit so I can take care of business in the ring."

His trainers will tell you they train him for war. But what Kirkland does in a ring is hardly war. War has the Geneva Conventions. There's nothing but a white towel to protect the men who stand in front of Kirkland's barrage.

But even if he makes the rest of the 154-pound division a little woozy, he shouldn't make them feel all that bad.

After all, Kirkland has been fighting all his life.



Born in East Austin, Texas, a rough neighborhood with all the charm of a battlefield and far removed from the polo shirts and khakis of the University of Texas, he was raised without his father and learned to get tough quick with the help of a mother who was herself a former boxer.

By six, he was already getting into street fights, so his mother figured that if he was going to hurt people, he might as well do it in a way that wouldn't end up with a rap sheet longer than the city phone book.

So she pointed her son in the direction of trainer Pops Billinglsey, a man, who, to hear Kirkland and Wolfe tell it, is something of a neighborhood angel complete with a crown of white hair for effect.

"He asked me if I could box," Kirkland says of that first meeting. "And I said no, but I sure can fight."

Kirkland wasn't lying.

"My main goal was to hurt people and not get in trouble," he says. "That's what I wanted to box. I wanted to put that anger out on someone else, punch them in face and not get in trouble for it. Boxing became something that I liked to do."

A gifted athlete at a young age, Kirkland never considered football even in the shadow of the Texas Longhorns.

Football, he explains, just wasn't tough enough.

"When I started, I liked to be hands on, punch," Kirkland says. "I was basically a fighter, I got in fights. When I got into boxing, and they said you get to punch a person, make them hurt and not get in trouble, I said that's it, that's what I want to do.

"In football, it's you hit me hard, I hit you hard, but there's no showing blood or lumps on your face. You don't know what you've done to a person."

Kirkland marched up the amateur ranks, but never quite marched away from the streets.

"You can't fight like you do out there, really," he says. "In boxing, you've got to have your head in it. But it teaches you desperation."

In 2001, he began training with Ann Wolfe, the legendary four-division women's champion and Youtube phenomenon for her brutal knockouts. The friendship was as sudden as that Wolfe right that floored Vonda Ward.

"We always had the same mindset," Kirkland says. "We had, basically took the stuff she was using, some of the stuff I was doing and put it together and became a mastermind of it. It just kicked in like a coach."

But the streets weren't done with Kirkland. Frustrated with the slow pace of the boxing build, he was arrested and convicted on a robbery charge. He was 11-0 with nine knockouts and his career may well have been over.

"I went through some tough times money wise and basically went back to some old bad habits," he says.

Kirkland lost two years of his career but gained plenty of time to think.

He thought about his daughter, who now has two brothers, and how she would be with a father in prison. And he thought about Pops' gym, struggling to make ends meet.

And with enough time in a small enough room, James Kirkland turned his life around.

Now, he's a fighter that could punch wood into pulp. That, and a role model.

"I just kept thinking about my kids, and I wanted to be a better person," he says. "I knew I could a make positive impact, show that I've changed, show that I took something good out of that."

And if Kirkland bears any ill will toward the hard road to get where he's going, not a hint of it bleeds into his voice.

"Outside the ring, everybody will tell you I'm a people's person," Kirkland says. "I get along with everybody."

Now, Kirkland is what boxing promises it can deliver, a way to dig out of a tough environment with only your will and hands as tools, and a fighter who bends the notes of made-for-tv violence into pure entertainment.

Now 24-0 and newly represented by Golden Boy Promotions, Kirkland is on the verge of boxing stardom, if only he can beat a hard punching former prospect once regarded as highly as Kirkland himself.

"This is exactly where I want to be," Kirkland says. "When I made this decision, I knew Golden Boy was capable of getting me where I want to go. Now I'm ready to show everybody what I can do."

No, he may never show the world he's a great boxer.

But if James Kirkland keeps up, he may show everyone that he's a fighter and a champion.