Meet the investment bankerand part-time model looking to add Katie’s crown to her expanding portfolio ‘I HAVE SEEN A LOT OF MISTAKES THAT KATIE HAS MADE’
McCaskill is convinced that her hectic schedule will pay dividends in time
EARLY Monday morning in the Windy City. A blanket of fog hangs over Lake Michigan as the final revellers of this Chicago weekend stagger home. Nobody, however, notices the young woman with a gym bag slung over her shoulder, weaving her way to the first train of a very long day.
Jessica McCaskill has already been up for a while. Since getting confirmation of a world title shot, her alarm has been set for four every morning. But she usually wakes before that to prepare the home-made cocoa butter snacks that sustain her on a journey she believes will end with her taking Katie Taylor’s WBA lightweight belt in York Hall on Wednesday.
If any crumb of doubt enters her mind, all she does is stare at one of the posters in her Chicago apartment that proclaims: ‘Anything is possible if you have the courage to make it happen.’
Taylor has spent the past seven weeks happily ensconced in a Connecticut training camp. Her opponent, on the other hand, is trying to become world champion while also holding down a day job as an investment banker. Following the first of two daily stints in the gym, McCaskill is at her desk by seven, crunching numbers in her role as a regulatory reporting specialist for RJ O’Brien in the heart of Chicago’s financial district.
All this is grist to the mill for the trolls who like to dismiss the bona fides of women’s pro boxing. Imagine Vasyl Lomachenko or Guillermo Rigondeaux spending eight hours behind a computer each day before their blockbuster bout in Madison Square Garden last night.
McCaskill shrugs it off. Her career and her boxing feed off each other. She feels she has found the perfect balance between the two. It means she must forsake the latest Netflix show that friends and colleagues are talking about, but that’s a small sacrifice.
‘It is long hours, late nights and early mornings. But I have a pretty set schedule so I am able to flow from one to the next,’ she explains. It becomes more problematic, though, when she helps her coach Rick Ramos train young fighters in their gym.
‘That is when it is a little more difficult because I need to adjust my training for the amateur fights. Rick and I both coach and corner the amateur fighters out of our gym [Body Shot Boxing Club]. It’s not the end of the world, I just need to make minor adjustments to my timing. I wouldn’t give up being there for my fighters, they need someone to guide them and Rick needs a helping hand. I want to support him the way he supports me.’
There is a lot to admire in McCaskill’s story. Raised with three older brothers in a single-parent household in Southern Illinois – a part of the state nicknamed ‘Little Egypt’ – she was a talented high school athlete, in basketball and softball. After graduating from Southern Illinois University, she moved to St Louis where she first started boxing. She was a latecomer to the sweet science. ‘It was only in 2008 when I started boxing,’ she says. But she had a gift for it. Within a couple of years, she was the female Golden Gloves champion of Missouri and followed that up with another title in Illinois. ‘I have definitely progressed fast. I have only been in the sport for less than 10 years and maybe only a couple of those as a professional. But it is my competitive nature that has allowed me to progress so fast.’ Having moved to Chicago from St Louis for work, McCaskill strolled into Ramos’ gym and her career accelerated at an even greater pace. ‘Once I came up here, I found Rick and he just pushed me every step of the way. He didn’t let me rest, kept setting new goals for me, for us to achieve. And it has worked out pretty well.’ It was only during the summer that the 33-year-old came to prominence in Ireland after calling Taylor out. She had just become the first female fighter to headline a boxing card in Chicago (or in the state of Illinois) and wasn’t impressed with the noises coming from Taylor’s camp as manager Brian Peters and promoter Eddie Hearn both described the difficulty in getting suitable opponents for Bray’s golden girl.
‘Nobody asked us,’ McCaskill points out. So, she decided to have a little fun, enslisting the help of a friend, who was a graphic designer to put Taylor’s image on milk cartons as a missing person.
‘The missing person milk carton was my idea. Rick said I needed to get in front of the camera more and that I should make my own video calling out Katie. I hadn’t seen any response to our McCaskill-Taylor campaign so it seemed to me that she was missing in action and that’s what spawned the milk carton video.’
These attention-grabbing campaigns might give the wrong impression of McCaskill. The toxic trash-talking that so often taints professional boxing is not her way. She just wanted to get noticed. And it worked as she has been given the opportunity of a lifetime in York Hall.
‘Katie is seen as the best around and I want to fight the best,’ McCaskill explains. This is a risky fight for Taylor to take as her first defence. It is clear that McCaskill can punch and she is evidently viewing this bout as her big chance. She claims she has seen some chinks in the armour of the Wicklow native and plans to go on the front foot from the opening bell in Bethnal Green.
‘I haven’t watched a full fight of hers but I have seen plenty of highlights and I have spotted a few mistakes that she has made. But it is not so much about what I see in her. It is what I see in her opponents. They have all been scared of her. The fight is over before it even starts.
‘I won’t be frightened of her. Katie won’t see any fear in me. Just from what I watched, everyone else seems terrified to engage her. They were scared to go on the front foot and just showed up. I promise that I will fight until the last bell.’
Having already made history by headlining that card at Chicago’s UIC Pavilion in July, McCaskill is aware that this Wednesday, the first live television card headlined by a women’s title bout, can be another shot in the arm for the sport – Hearn and Sky are putting their money where their mouth is with their promotion of Taylor. If you have a Sky Sports package, it will be hard to miss the bout on Wednesday as it is going out on three channels – Sky Sports Arena, Sky Sports Mix and Sky Sports Main Event.
‘I know this fight is making history as the first females headlining a show on Sky Sports. This is just another time where women are breaking barriers. And we will continue to do so in this sport,’ McCaskill says.
‘I am very conscious of the opportunities to make history when it comes to the sport and lead the way. And after I take this opportunity, I will look for more ways to continue to build up the sport.’
McCaskill, who somehow also fits part-time modelling into her hectic schedule, is conscious of the image projected by women’s boxing and does her best to control her own
‘TAYLOR IS SEEN AS THE BEST AROUND, I WANT TO FIGHT THE BEST
brand, with her own website and line of clothing based on the CasKILLA nickname dreamt up by a former work colleague. ‘It was seen as a mix of McCaskill and Godzilla,’ she explains.
Like Taylor, McCaskill is well aware that she is carrying the flame for the sport and she can actively encourage other females to come into boxing. She insists: ‘Even in the 10 years that I have been in the sport, I have seen a much greater female presence in boxing and in gyms.’
There will be a predominantly Irish crowd at the London venue on Wednesday. But McCaskill can count on some support, as her firm has London offices and they snapped up tickets before it all sold out.
It means she won’t feel completely on her own when she boxes outside the United States for the first time.
Not that is likely to bother her. It’s the chance she has been waiting for, the reason she’s in the gym every morning before Chicago wakes up. And she believes that when she rejoins the Windy City’s early morning rush at some point next week, she will do so as the lightweight champion of the world.