For champion boxer Alicia Acero, no boxing match could ever compare to the biggest fight of her life. Nothing that happens in here ever could. “I’ve been kicked out of my house ever since I was eleven years old,” she said.
While other kids at her West Palm Beach, Florida elementary school were learning how to add and subtract, Acero was learning how to make it to the next day without parents. “I had to sneak into skate parks to sleep under a ramp just to have covering from the weather,” she said.
Her teachers had no idea. “They didn’t really know,” said Acero. “I didn’t really open up to anybody. I went into school just to eat.”
Acero was all alone. “You can’t trust,” said Acero. “You always had to watch your own back. Nobody else was there to watch you. Nobody was there to protect you.”
But Alicia did know she had a brother. After two years on the streets she finally made it up to Toledo, Ohio to stay with him. “I would always stay there and, you know, do dishes, my laundry, hang out,” said Acero. “Spend time with nieces and nephews. And then I would just go wander.”
After graduating from high school in Ohio, Alicia thought the worst days of her life were behind her. Then her brother, John Richard White died in 2012 when he was assaulted while working as a bouncer. He was 38. Acero was 23.
With her brother gone, Alicia felt like she no longer had anyone in her corner. “That’s why I cam to this gym,” said Acero. “Smitty’s a veteran. And he understands about depression and emotional things.”
“When she first came in here she was kind of cocky,” said Darrell “Smitty” Smith, owner of Smitty’s Midwest Boxing Gym in Springfield. “And I thought, ‘Oh this ain’t going to work.'”
“It was really lonely and really depressing,” said Acero. “I wasn’t the most pleasant person to get along with.”
“She was talking back to me and then we sit down after about three days and I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?'” said Smith.
“He pulled me out of it and said, ‘You can’t dwell on the past. You know, your brother wouldn’t have wanted that,'” said Acero.
“She had some of my guys getting tired because she won’t stop coming forward.” said Smith. “I named her “White Lighting.” And I named her that for a reason. She brings the heat.”
Now she prepares for the biggest fight of her pro boxing career, putting her title on the line. “The only family I have is in the gym,” said Acero. “When I’m in the ring I feel like I’m home. In there, it’s fight or flight. And I’m going to fight because I’ve fought my whole life.”
