By Benjamin Garrison Photographs by John Pai
At 4 feet, 11 inches and 106 pounds, Kim Messer doesn’t appear to be the kind of woman who could kick your ass. But watching her instruct a group of men — all of whom stand at least a foot taller than her — on how to kick, move and counter, shows how she’s a natural in the boxing and kickboxing world.
Just two decades ago, such a career for Messer would not have been feasible. Prior to the 1980s, female boxers were almost unheard of, and it wasn’t until the 1990s when the sport started to gain popularity and a slow acceptance. Now women’s kickboxing is gaining momentum, and female MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fights are starting to receive media coverage.
Messer is one of the women responsible for bringing these sports into the mainstream. Between 1994 and 2000, she won four kickboxing and boxing world championships.
“I was extremely impressed with her technical skills and quickness,” recalls Sue TL Fox of the first time she saw Messer fight. Fox is a former boxer who runs Women Boxing Archive Network. “There’s fighters that can be real skillful but they’re not very interesting to watch. Kim is an exciting fighter to watch. She brings a lot of showmanship into boxing.”
Today, she owns and operates Ring Sports United (RSU) with her husband, Mark, who is also an accomplished martial artist and former Washington State kickboxing champion. Their gym in Bellevue, Wash., a large suburb just east of Seattle, has an enrollment of around 200 students who take classes in boxing, kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and MMA. Messer is the primary kickboxing instructor and helps out with the boxing class, drawing on years of experience in both sports to guide a new generation of enthusiasts and competitors.
With enormous physical demands and time commitments, Messer’s journey to become a professional fighter was a difficult one. It required a great deal of tenacity and diligence, characteristics she has exhibited since childhood.
Messer doesn’t know when she was born or the name given to her at birth. She was found wandering alone in a train station in Seoul when she was about 3 years old. When authorities were unable to locate her family, she was taken to Holt orphanage in Jecheon. At the orphanage, unidentified children were given the last name of the person who took care of them. So for two years, she was known as Baik Kee Soon.
Around the age of 5, Baik was adopted by the Messer family in Oregon. Once in America, she became Kimberly Sue, an energetic child who quickly adapted to her new surroundings. Family photos chronicle an active and busy life growing up in the small town of Silverton. Messer played tennis, softball and volleyball in high school, and was a gymnast and cheerleader. She also did ballet for eight years and performed twice in Portland’s Ballet West School of Dance annual production of “The Nutcracker.” While pliés and tutus seem at odds with roundhouse kicks and boxing gloves, much of the coordination, balance and athleticism necessary to succeed in ballet carried over into her endeavors in the ring.
“Ballet is where I developed a lot of my training skills and just got used to the factor of daily preparation.”
Messer says she was always drawn to martial arts. “Fighting is the highest form of competition there is because of the one-on-one challenge,” she explains. “It’s totally up to you. You’re not reliant on anyone else like you are with a team sport.”
She adds, “And I like to hit people.”
Messer’s mother, Marlys Sanford, however, wasn’t eager to have her daughter involved in such a rough sport.
“It’s not something that I would have chosen for her to do,” says Sanford. “But Kim is very determined in anything that she makes her mind up to do. She puts everything into anything she’s ever tried to accomplish.”
Messer actually enrolled in taekwondo after she began college. This decision changed her life. It was in class that she met her future husband and took the first steps on a path that would later lead to multiple world titles and see her return to Korea.
To get there, Messer was trained by her husband three times a day, six days a week, while working as a waitress. “It can be very nerve-wracking to have the responsibility of training your wife and it’s a heavy load on your shoulders but the rewards are great,” says Messer. “I know he’s going to be looking out for my best interests.”
Before relocating to Washington, the couple made the 200-mile drive from Salem to Seattle nearly every weekend to train with kickboxing legend Maurice Smith.
Her professional kickboxing debut came in Tokyo, in 1992, against a former world champion. Although she lost her first fight, she held her ground and quickly found success in the sport, going on to win three world titles. In 1996, she made the move to professional boxing. By chance, a Korean boxing promoter saw an interview in which Messer acknowledged that she’d like to fight for a world title in her native country. Arrangements were made, and a few months later, Messer was training for just such an opportunity.
On August 5, 2000, she became the International Female Boxing Association (IFBA) Jr. Flyweight champion. Messer defeated Japanese boxer Yumi Takano in a fierce 10-round contest at the Coex Convention Center in Seoul. It was the first female boxing match held in Korea and especially meaningful for Messer given her heritage and history with the city.
“It was incredible. It felt like it was my destiny, that this is where I was supposed to be because I had left Korea when I was a child. I was abandoned, I didn’t have anybody. Then going back to Korea and fighting in front of the country I left — everything culminated. To stand in front of them as a champion, it felt like everything had come full circle.”
The following November, Messer returned to Seoul and defended her title.
Since then, the sport has gained popularity and a number of Korean women have joined the professional boxing ranks. K-1, another form of mixed martial arts, has also recently garnered a wide audience in Korea, thanks to an increased number of matches there and the success of “Techno Goliath” Choi Hong Man, a 7-foot 2-inch fighter known for dancing to techno music after a win.
Messer would like to bring female MMA to a similar level in Korea and says she is open to coming back to fight, but it would depend on the offer. Currently, she is in self-described “semi-retirement,” although she still trains and teaches at the gym six days a week. For now, coaching and developing fighters is her main focus, and she hopes to pass the mantle of success on to young boxers like Melissa Shaffer, the first pro athlete who Messer has head-coached and is currently the only pro at RSU.
Like Messer, Shaffer grew up in a small town — her graduating class had 54 people and the ceremony lasted less than an hour. Her parents split up early on, but while together, the family moved often due to her father’s military career. In 1992, her mother, who is Korean, moved to Arkansas and Shaffer vowed never to move again. A few years after high school, she found herself partying a lot, just out of a long-term relationship, and wanting to do something “constructive.” Although she enjoyed watching boxing on TV, she had never considered entering the ring, but this changed when a friend mentioned that she was attending a local boxing class. Shaffer decided to tag along and found her calling. Her coach was a former “Toughman” competitor, essentially a “professional opponent,” and while he didn’t possess a championship background like Messer’s, Shaffer quickly learned enough to land a contract and began boxing professionally.
Shaffer’s mother was shocked to learn of her daughter’s career. “You’re not my son, you’re my daughter,” she said, vowing not to attend any of her fights. Eventually, Shaffer and her sister were able to persuade their mother to go, and she attended all of her daughter’s hometown fights after that.
For international fights, Shaffer’s agent was a man named Paul Kim. He also represented Messer and arranged her international matches, including her title-winning and championship-defending bouts in Korea. Through Kim, Shaffer arranged to visit RSU for three days to see if training there might be a better fit. She was immediately comfortable around the Messers and felt it was time for a change. Two weeks later, she was living in Seattle.
Since training with Messer, Shaffer has broken many of the bad habits she picked up while training in Arkansas. She realized she was more comfortable as a southpaw, despite starting out as a righty. She’s had to relearn some things, but says it’s been beneficial, too. Training other people is much easier, since most are right-handed and she spent three years fighting that way herself. She’s also taken on an “apprentice” role at RSU — working the desk, helping during classes, coaching amateurs and even giving private lessons.
In the last six months, Shaffer started kickboxing and MMA training. In February, she went to Santa Rosa, Calif., for her first professional MMA bout. Although she lost, she gained valuable experience and decided to continue Jiu-Jitsu and MMA training. Even if no more MMA fights come her way, she says it’s good for cross-training and keeps her busy.
There’s a chance she’ll return to Korea for another title fight in the next few months, but for now, she’s taking it “a little easy,” which means three workouts and 3.5 to 4 hours a day at the gym, five or six days a week on top of working. She plans to keep that schedule and continue fighting as long as she can, but eventually wants to move into coaching and personal training.
Thanks to pioneers like Messer, that’s now a realistic option. And thanks to the next generation of fighters like Shaffer, who are helping the sport gain popularity and acceptance among both men and women, the preconceived notion of what constitutes a fighter is beginning to change.
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