Photo by Chris Witzke
Body fat percentage near zero, confidence at 11 and an easy, pretty smile with only one chipped tooth. Kenneth “TJ” Shoats looks like a champ. And that’s the goal — to turn boxing from a pastime into a professional career. “I definitely think I hit hard enough to turn pro,” he says with a grin — his teeth a straight, white wonder minus that front one his aunt, a dentist, will fix tomorrow. A punch taken during his bout at the Golden Gloves National Tournament in Louisiana in early May cracked it. The “close to six feet tall” Shoats lost that match to the boxer representing Iowa. But Shoats has a whole lot of wins (including, most recently, becoming the reigning champion from the state of Indiana at 165 pounds) and plenty of discipline.
Shoats wakes at 6 in the morning for some yoga, heads out for a run or other cardio, goes to work for nearly 10 hours as an optician, trains for two more hours after work and twice a week goes to his grandma’s place to fill her bathtub with ice water up to his neck and sit for 20 minutes. “It feels good,” he says. He eats about 1,800 healthy calories a day, rarely any junk. Shoats didn’t start boxing until he was 19. And, yes, at 27 he may be older than a lot of his competition. “But I have maturity,” he says. “I have no problem making weight.” He trains at Area 502 boxing gym on Poplar Level Road and competes throughout the region.
Shoats played baseball as a kid, tried bodybuilding for a bit in his early 20s. “I got tired of flexing in the mirror,” he says with a laugh. “And I needed to compete.” He appreciates boxing’s structure and identity, the grace, theatrics and skill involved. He hopes to start a youth outreach program to show that boxing in Louisville is alive. “It didn’t stop with Ali,” he says.
This originally appeared in the June 2017 issue of Louisville Magazine. To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, click here. To find your very own copy of Louisville Magazine, click here.
