MINNESOTA BOXING BETTER BECAUSE OF BAUCH

She merely wanted to find a way to improve her self-defense skills. She was a nightclub manager and thought it would be beneficial. What she found instead was a career in what is largely a man’s world, and countless Minnesota fighters and the sport of boxing itself are the better for her discovery.

Lisa Bauch founded and owns the Uppercut Gymnasium in Northeast Minneapolis, a spacious, 9000-foot facility that caters to men and women who want simply to take advantage of the health benefits of training or who actually want to learn the science of boxing and compete. Fitness or competition? Take your pick. The facility offers memberships and various packages to meet the individual needs of clients.

Bauch started out 21 years ago with a 4000-foot gym on Lake Street, and has changed the breadth, depth and location of her enterprise in the time since.

“The game has changed,’’ she explained. “It has to be run as a business. There are still volunteers, and you have to give back to them. You can’t work them to death. That idea has gotten lost at times.’’

You cannot keep a facility as large as the Uppercut Gym open on the goodness of the many volunteers devoted to the sport. “You have to think out of the box,’’ she explained. “You have to be creative.’’

Consequently, the Uppercut Gym is available to rent – for weddings, for videos. She has staged numerous weddings with that creative thinking, something that pays the bills and keeps her large facility open.

She has kept boxing front and center in her plans and ambitions, contributing a vast amount of enterprise to a sport that frequently is given the short straw. She not only works as a trainer for men and women wanting to learn the rudiments of boxing, she has worked with professional fighters as well.

Bauch is the Region I director of the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves and worked as a cornerwoman for one-time IBA middleweight champion Tony Bonsante.

The Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame honors Lisa Bauch tonight for her many contributions to the sport of boxing, and the devotion that has enabled her to confront and overcome many gender obstacles that might have stopped a lesser woman.