Amelia Moore: “I think there is a difference between living and just existing, and if you don’t get out of just surviving, you don’t experience life, and boxing has helped create myself.”

Amelia Moore: “I think there is a difference between living and just existing, and if you don’t get out of just surviving, you don’t experience life, and boxing has helped create myself.”

The Olympic dream has long been there for the elite and decorated American amateur Amelia Moore. A lifetime of work. An endless drain on her financial and mental resources. The realisation of that dream has been close. But that fruitless journey has ended without reward for Moore. The chase has been long for a fighter who has given up virtually everything for the chance to compete in an Olympic Games. Moore has been on Team USA since 2011. Her talents and ambitions expected more. 

As we connected over Zoom, even a few weeks after the acceptance that her long-time aspirations would never come to fruition, the disappointment was unmistakable.

“We’ve just had an Olympic qualifier, an international one,” Moore told me. “The fighters in the two weight categories I was contesting punched their ticket to Paris. So unless something catastrophic happens, and how many times does that happen, it’s over. If I went as an alternate, I would be an unpaid training partner, which would be a huge commitment. So I declined my invitation to the Olympic Trials, which is kind of a big deal because I was an alternate for the 2020 Games. I have been super competitive, and I was a top seed for everything.”

The qualification process has changed. It did in Tokyo but for pandemic reasons. This time, the ongoing politics of the amateur code have forced the change. For Moore, it changed everything and ended any lingering hopes of making Paris in 2024.

“They pushed out IBA and created a new organisation, World Boxing, to try and preserve boxing in the Olympic Games. The US, Ireland, and a few other countries came together, but it wasn’t on a great timeline for all the other athletes,” Moore relayed to FightPost. “We should have had an Olympic qualifier before the Pan American Games, and it didn’t give the athletes the time for the right to compete. A lot of countries experienced that. For someone like me, I have competed in the sport for over a decade now, I’ve competed in seven different countries, won international medals, an Olympic alternate, and multi-time National Champion in the US. I’ve competed in four different weight classes, and I have been on a tear recently. The current circumstances do suck for a lot of high-level fighters.”

Maybe it was inevitable that another fire was lit when the Paris dream died. Moore will now turn professional and try her luck in the thriving world of professional boxing. But there are still regrets that her amateur career didn’t end the way that she wanted it to. But in many ways, Moore felt she just had to let go. No matter how painful it was to do so.

“With me jumping around the weight classes this year, it has changed my perspective. I think there is so much pressure with weight classes. You have to be this weight because you are bigger and stronger. I’m tiny at 66kg, but I put on a clinic at my last tournament, and I looked phenomenal,” Moore told FightPost. “However, I chose to step away from the trials because it costs so much money. It’s a ton of money to continue competing on your own dollar and to what end. Do I want to go for another Olympic cycle? I don’t think so. With the credentials that I have built and the experience that I have, it is the pros next.

“I have done this a lot for the love, and there has been so much sacrifice naturally, so on the road to success. There will rarely be a holiday, a birthday party or a wedding you are going to make. Nine times out of time, you are going to miss them all just for the love of the sport. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not a pastime. I have come to this crossroads, and it is hard. Endings are hard. The pros are great, but I wanted to be an Olympian. When you come to the end of the road, it is going to be tough. I know it wasn’t because of my performances but sometimes the road comes to an end and it’s your choice to pick a new path. I’m definitely looking at options for the pros, I’m updating my resume, and I’m looking to put that out to all the promoters. That is the hope, I don’t want to be a free agent. You can be having high-profile fights and not making very much. So, with my accolades, I would love to be placed with a good promotion and start from there. I’m not looking to have a career the same as the amateur career I’ve just had. There’s not a dollar I’ve spent, or put on a credit card, that I have wasted. That is what money is for. It is there to create experience, but it would be really nice to now see that return. When I turn professional, it’s not all about the money, but it’s a career path.”

The world of professional boxing is an unrelenting place. Fighters need luck and a lot of it, but maybe the biggest asset a fighter needs is resilience. Moore knows this better than most. She was selected as the alternate for the Tokyo Olympics, but a severe bout of the COVID-19 virus rocked her world, taking away that alternate place. But it could have been worse. Much worse.

“A lot of people have. I think a lot of people who are drawn to boxing have faced a lot of adversity. I got COVID-19 in March 2021, and they said I was one of the worst cases they had seen among elite athletes. It was pretty scary,” Moore says. “At that point, I didn’t even know if I would be able to run again or what damage there was to my lungs. I was 24 hours away from being ventilated if I didn’t show enough promise or improvement. I definitely feel grateful that my body was strong enough to recover. I didn’t leave the house for about a month after I left the hospital. It was a lot of rehab coming back from that.”

Recovering from Covid-19 is only part of her story of overcoming adversity. Moore is a born survivor. A born fighter.

“I have been on my own for a very long time. I got emancipation when I was sixteen, and that’s when a young person gets guardianship of themselves. It’s incredible how many people use the tool of boxing as a therapy to really dig into themselves. For a very long time, I was in survival mode. You take care of yourself. You are in unstable situations. Those situations are hostile. You have to take care of yourselves. You have to make it. You are just surviving as opposed to really living. I think there is a difference between living and just existing, and if you don’t get out of just surviving, you don’t experience life, and boxing has helped create myself.”

Moore might have missed out on some of the targets in her amateur days, but she is nevertheless aiming big when she turns over at some point in 2024.

“I think all of us are trying to go to the top. In the amateurs, I kept saying there are two tournaments I haven’t been to, the Pan American Games and the Olympics. That was something I really wanted. That was always the goal. I know the skill level, and I know the talent that I have. I know that I should be competing at the top.” Moore is very much a fighter who will be chasing world titles when that professional debut eventually arrives.

Even in just twenty-odd minutes spent on Zoom with Amelia Moore, it’s clear she wants to right the wrongs of her amateur career. It was a time when she didn’t quite match her own lofty ambitions. You sense, Moore will enter her new world with a very big point to prove.