Almudena Álvarez’s life is a true movie story. The Madrid boxer, who studied film and television script, as well as audiovisual and image production, has a very clear idea of what her life story’s title would be: “It is never too late.” Her history is quite uncommon – she started boxing after the age of 30, having previously played football, overcome anorexia, worked in management and production, and even opposed the police, among many other pursuits. She didn’t make the leap to professional boxing until she was approaching 40, an age when many athletes have already retired or are considering doing so.
After becoming a three-time consecutive champion of Spain Amateur from 2017 to 2019, Álvarez won the European weight belt at 42 years old, beating out 1,500 people. Just over a week ago, she became the first coach of the national boxing team, a sport that has long been considered male-dominated. “For me, it means culminating the work that I’ve been doing these years,” Álvarez says. “My sports career, professionally speaking, has focused on being a coach. I hope that many more come behind me and that they don’t have to make the same effort as me to reach this level.”
Álvarez also leaves a reflection: “It seems that a woman has to expose her credentials and men don’t. We have to demonstrate more. Boxing has always been conceived as a super masculine sport.” She has already begun to exercise as a trainer in the female boxing team of the Madrid High Performance Center, formed by five fighters. “With a view to also training the male later, not limiting myself,” she explains.
Spanish Boxing Radiography
Among her pupils in the CAR is Laura Fuertes, the first Spanish to win a medal in a World Cup and the first to qualify for the games. “The results of the latest games – bronze for Enmanuel Reyes Plá and silver for Ayoub Ghadfa – already define how Spanish boxing is, in an ascending line. It has improved a lot in a very short time. As for the female, the level has risen thanks to the investment of companies such as Iberdrola and the CSD Women’s Universe program. Before, there were almost no girls competing because there was no economic support. Now there are also higher prizes at the international level, and that motivates more. We cannot live in the air, no matter how much we like sport. Thanks to the fact that there are now more girls, there is also more level because it grows to all,” Álvarez analyzes.
Although steps are still being taken towards equality, Álvarez acknowledges that it is still more complicated to capture women to get on the ring than men. “We usually leave the sport for studies. Sports speaking, men have more facilities. In professional boxing, there are practically no Spanish women. It is very difficult to find sparrings or a level rival. It has been growing, but with little steps,” Álvarez adds, who had already decided that 2025 would be the year she would hang up her gloves.
From Football to the Ring for a Doll Injury
As a child, Álvarez’s sport was football. She never took it too seriously because she thought it was “totally unthinkable to be able to dedicate herself to it in the future.” She would have liked to play football 11, but in her time, there were hardly any female teams, and she had to opt for room football. “When the Women’s Soccer Team won the 2023 World Cup, I started crying because I saw that it was possible. When believed in them and has been invested, the results have arrived,” Álvarez insists.
She played in Móstoles Women but got injured too much. “More than boxing,” she notes. “In boxing, you are prepared to receive blows, football is a very explosive sport with many very harmful rhythm changes,” she adds. An injury to the two wrists was the reason why she ended up on the ring. It was the end of 2012, and a friend convinced her to go to the gym. According to her, it would help her strengthen the dolls and be fit. “I did not strengthen them,” she reveals laughing, “but it is true that my physical form improved. I started training boxing without competing, but when you see that you are good and I am very competitive…”
“How much do you weigh?” was the question her coach asked her ten years ago, with the intention of pointing her to her first fight as an amateur boxer. Something logical in a sport where categories are established according to weight. But that innocent question left Álvarez blank. “I was blank, I had not weighed myself in 13 years. I had no scale in my house. I had suffered adolescent anorexia,” she recalls. There was a time when her rivals did not wear gloves, but had been food and calories that beat her.
The first time she revealed her eating problems was in an interview she granted to El Mundo last year. Now, she talks about them normally; they are past water. “From that time, I have enough gaps. I have commented with my psychologist. I imagine anorexia was a way to channel problems at home, two of my friends also had eating problems… They gathered enough things,” she says. It has been a long time since Álvarez left anorexia behind. She learned to control food and weight as an athlete, in a healthy way. Now, she lives normally with the scale.
The Jump to Professional
In 2022, Álvarez became a professional boxer. In her first fight, she climbed into the ring with pants with fringes of the LGTBI flag. “In the European, I wanted to go with the look of Mel C, the Spice Girl athlete, because it reminds me of my adolescence. And I have also boxed with pants inspired by ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson,” she says. Always surrounded by the music that has marked her.
Madrid achieved the European belt by superploum weight by technical decision (Triple 80-73) before her compatriot Marian Herrería and 1,500 people in the Pau 4 Sports Center in Móstoles. Today, in full time of social networks and youtubers turned into boxers for a day, Álvarez does not see it badly, “whenever they take it seriously and prepare well. Boxing is for everyone. What makes me angry is that they charge so much money. It’s like the world upside down, you have to be famous to box, you don’t get famous by boxing,” she says. There is the reflection. Álvarez will make a fight in Canada on March 15 against Canadian Leila Beaudoin (12-1-0) for a WBO international title. “I will win four times more than in Spain, and I couldn’t say no,” she acknowledges. “And maybe one more, and I say goodbye.” She will say goodbye after a decade since she debuted in the ring.