My name is Chevelle Hallback and I’m a mail handler at the Tampa, FL, Processing and Distribution Center. When my day ends there, I go to the gym to train for my role as a professional boxer.
When I was 5, my mother took me to see “Rocky.” While the main character and Apollo Creed were fighting on the screen, my mother jumped out of her seat in the middle of the theater and started yelling at Rocky to “Hit him back! Hit him back!”
Any other child would have been embarrassed, but I felt inspired to do something that would get people that excited. Two years later, I saw Muhammed Ali and Leon Spinks fight. I went to bed wishing I could be a boxer.
Many years later, I saw two women fighting in the ring during the co-main event for a Mike Tyson fight. That was on a Saturday. I went to the boxing gym the following Monday.
You can play football, basketball or soccer, but you don’t play boxing. You’re stepping into a square ring not knowing if you’re even going to come back out alive. The wrong hit to a temple could end your life. You need mental toughness to prepare your body to enter the ring.
In my first fight in 1997, I knocked out my opponent in the first 30 seconds. For my second fight, I got a big head and didn’t train properly. My first fight was in a gym. My second fight was on national TV in front of thousands — and I lost. They played that fight over and over on ESPN II. I went into a depression for two weeks.
But I came back from that to win my next fight. And in my fifth fight, I won a world title.
I’m now a seven-time world champion — and at 52, I’m the oldest boxer to win a world title.
At one point I had my own gym, but when it closed, I needed a new opportunity. I found out the Postal Service needed employees for the holidays. I got hired in 2012 and have been here ever since.
I share the lessons I’ve learned from boxing with my co-workers and the young people I mentor.
Anybody can be beaten at any time, so don’t get bigheaded and don’t take things for granted — prepare yourself. Don’t let age define you and don’t give up.
If you have a desire in your heart, don’t give up on your hopes and dreams.
