Tulum boxer Asia Raele wins her division at Golpe de Oro

Coaches in Cozumel made sure the Tulum boxer knew who she was about to face. A national champion with a continental medal, they told her. Asia Raele knocked her down in the first round.

Raele, who is 30 and Italian, had crossed to the island for the Golpe de Oro Cozumel 2026, a national amateur tournament held from September 24 to 27 at the Unidad Deportiva Bicentenario. More than 160 fighters competed in two rings set up under the dome, in delegations from Tamaulipas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. Municipal president José Luis Chacón Méndez opened the event and announced a better-equipped boxing gym for the island during the ceremony.

She came back with the belt at 50 kilos. Three years ago, Raele had never trained to fight at all. She walked into a Muay Thai class on Holbox because it looked like fun, and she has not stopped since. For the past year, she has worked at Wise Boxing in Tulum, four to six hours a day, around shifts at a hotel in town. The account of her fights in Cozumel comes from her coach there.

A knockdown in the first, a decision in the third

The warnings reached her well before she was anywhere near the ring. Coaches around the venue wanted her to know what she was walking into, and they were specific about it. The woman in the other corner was Dinack Sarahí Garza López.

Garza, from Playa del Carmen, has won regional and national titles and has fought for Mexico's youth national team. She took bronze in the 50-kilogram division at the 2023 Continental Olympic Boxing Championship in Cali, Colombia, a tournament with roughly 350 fighters from 21 countries. She medaled at the CONADE national games the same year, and Solidaridad gave her its municipal sports award in 2022.

Raele let none of it reach her, her coach said. She went out and landed a straight left clean in the first round, and her opponent went down.

A knockdown normally costs the fighter who takes it the round, 10-8 on the amateur scale. Raele then had two more rounds to protect the lead, and the bout ran its full distance. She took the decision.

The account of both fights comes from Raele's corner at Wise Boxing, which also identified the opponent.

Holbox, Campeche, Canada, then Tulum

The route to that corner was never part of the plan. Raele started Muay Thai on Holbox with no intention of competing, kept it up in Campeche, in Canada, and brought it with her when she settled in Tulum.

Boxing came later. Over the past year at Wise Boxing, a small gym in La Veleta that trains fitness clients and competitors in the same room, she has carried both disciplines at once, the Thai work and the hands. The hands took longer to pay.

The move from Muay Thai to boxing strips out the kicks and the clinch, leaving the hands to carry all the scoring. She started making that move a year ago.

Six hours a day, split four ways

An hour of running in the morning. Two hours of boxing and Muay Thai. An hour of jiu jitsu. Then another hour or two with her coach or the rest of the team, on the days she is not working a shift at the hotel.

That has been the pattern since the day she joined the gym, according to her coach, who sums up the rest of her life in four verbs. She eats, sleeps, works and trains.

The losses the Tulum boxer carried into Cozumel

The record she brought to the island was anything but clean. A broken hand cost her months in Muay Thai. Her first two boxing fights both went to the judges, and both went against her, decisions her coach still calls unfair. The tournament before this one ended in Cancún with a loss to the champion.

She arrived in Cozumel with her most recent results against her.

Every round of the final went her way

The Golpe de Oro hands a belt to the winner of each division, and it hands out plenty of them. The 2023 edition crowned 65 champions over three days. The tournament began in 2022 as a municipal card organized on the island and now pulls delegations from five states, with national names on its programs from the start. Shomara Alanís, a bronze medalist at the 2022 CONADE national games, fought on that first card. Gyms along this coast have used recent editions as competition before the municipal qualifiers that lead back to CONADE.

That first edition drew teams from Solidaridad, Benito Juárez, Lázaro Cárdenas and Cozumel. Tulum was not on the list. This year it was.

Raele's final was not close. She controlled it with footwork and technique, round after round, and finished the week as champion of the 57-kilogram division.

She posted a photograph from the floor of the venue afterward, the belt around her waist and one hand up. "Not much to say," she wrote. "Hard work pays off."

Do you know another athlete in Tulum training at this level between work shifts? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.