Zoe Gould: “Boxing will definitely always be a part of my life.”

Zoe Gould: “Boxing will definitely always be a part of my life.”

Boxing has a never-ending darkness seemingly attached to it. For many reasons, I constantly question my involvement in it. A dirty business that can take so much and give so little back. Recent words from that famed wordsmith Donald McRae are incredibly hard to forget or ignore. “I feel so ashamed to follow boxing so closely because look what it does. Boxing can save a life. But it can also take a life.”

But like McRae obviously finds, there is still something quite addictive about the sport. I still love boxing in its simplistic sense. But away from the bright lights, things are very different. The deeper you go, the more you see things you can’t unsee. But it’s the fighters that stop me from walking away. The opportunity to tell their story never gets tired. Every Zoom interview is a gentle reminder of what the sport can bring. The twenty minutes I shared with Zoe Gould was another of those pleasant reminders of what boxing can do.

Gould was born in Bristol before a trip to Australia morphed into something more. “I came out here for a gap year around nine years ago, and I never went home,” Gould told me over Zoom.

“I started boxing by doing Corporate Fighter, which is a twelve-week program,” Gould said when I asked how boxing came into her life. “I had done a bit of boxing for fitness back in the UK. I used to compete in triathlons. I had been to a local boxing club a few times for a bit of fitness. But when I moved to Australia, it was my first time away from home, and I didn’t do any exercise. I am a very competitive person, so I can’t really do any sport unless there is some kind of competition at the end of it. So one of my mates told me about this corporate fighter and said it looked kind of fun.”

It wasn’t actually love at first sight for Gould. But eventually, maybe inevitably, the hook was in. “I actually hated it when I first did it. I had done loads of sports growing up, and I was always good at most sports. But boxing took a while for me to get my head into it. But I found that intriguing. But I thought I would that one fight, tick it off my bucket list, and then that would be it. But come fight night, I just thought that was the best thing I had ever done in my life, and I wanted to keep on doing it.”

“I lost on a split decision,” Gould adds when I ask if she remembers her first fight. “But after only twelve weeks of boxing, I couldn’t really complain. I had a lot of fun with the fight, and I thought I would keep training. I was already a PT Instructor at the time, so I was doing it for fitness, and I was enjoying it and incorporating it into my coaching. But the more I got into boxing, the more I enjoyed coaching boxing.”

Before Covid stopped the world turning, Gould had a couple of exhibitions before going down the more traditional route of entering the State Championships. Gould was working in Sydney but got she got moved to rural Australia. “It’s the middle of nowhere in rural Australia on the East Coast,” Gould said of that new environment. Her new home didn’t have a solitary boxing gym. She soon set about changing that.

“I just decided to open one,” Gould told me. “I built a boxing gym myself. I ran that for three years. But then, in the last year, a few little things happened. I had a health scare. I also fractured my ankle, and I couldn’t train. I was coaching people, but I really found myself missing competing. I tried to coach myself for a fight. But that did not turn out well. I went in the ring and got absolutely smashed in this fight.”

After that nightmare experience, Gould decided to get a little more serious about her sport. “I just thought I really wanted to give this a proper crack, competing and fighting. I want to put everything into it. So I sold the gym, and within about a month, I had moved to Newcastle, New South Wales. I spent the first few months trying out different gyms, but I found my current gym, and they are amazing. I love it there; I am fighting on a regular basis. At the moment, I am training more or less at the same intensity as the pros. I want to give myself the best opportunity over the next few years to see if I have the potential to take it further. Just to say I gave it my all.”

Gould is a resident of Australia but not a citizen, and sadly, that made her ineligible to represent Australia at the upcoming Commonwealth Games or the 2028 Olympics. But the paid ranks are almost certainly in her future.

“I would love to turn professional if there is an opportunity to,” Gould relayed to me. “There is a big professional team at the gym where I box at. I have been training, and I will try and get as many amateur fights as I can in the next year or two. And see what happens.”

“Boxing gives me everything,” Gould adds when I ask her what boxing gives her. “Like I said, I was doing triathlon before, and that was such a monotonous sport. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but there wasn’t much thinking involved. Boxing is so tactical. People say it’s like a game of chess, and it really is. I love pushing myself to the limit. Boxing allows me to do that. To push myself so much that I am in tears, or I am on the floor exhausted because I have been ‘bashed’ too hard. I have never experienced that before. It makes me feel really good.”

Zoe Gould is incredibly level-headed about her sport. There is passion and ambition, but also an awareness of the dangers of her sport.

“Right now, I am committed to being an athlete,” Gould says. “But equally, I enjoy coaching as well. I want to continue to coach, and at the end of the day, you can’t box forever. Honestly, I don’t want to be taking punches for the rest of my life. I’ll still do it as a hobby, but in a few years, I think I’ll be done competing and dropping more into a coaching role. But boxing will definitely always be a part of my life.”