Jessica McCaskill Says She Went From Homelessness To World Champion

Jessica McCaskill grew up homeless as a child in Chicago during the 1980s but still became a world champion.

McCaskill says the way she grew up allowed her to be the aggressive boxer she is. The 36-year-old said the struggles only made her win as a world champion that much better.

“I’ve had a lot of different points in my life where I was up and down, in and out,” McCaskill told Sky Sports. “I had very humble beginnings. We were homeless, we had struggles. It made me grow up very fast as a kid to work through these things. There were a lot of times when we went without. I’ve had Christmases where I didn’t get any presents and I just had to keep my chin up. I had to grow up. So [beating Braekhus] was for the person who had to sacrifice. I gave myself a present.”

Although most boxers come from a decorated amateur background and boxing in the Olympics, Jessica McCaskill was not that. She found boxing by chance and now is one of the bets female boxers alive.

“That person that I started out being was always competitive and into sports. It was my outlet,” she said. But I was never in an individual sport, I always did cheerleading, basketball, flag football. One day I walked into a gym and did a kickboxing class, and loved it. In the same gym, there was a boxing coach. After my trial period with the kickboxing, I went over to the boxing. The first time I got punched in the face I thought: ‘That wasn’t so bad! Now it’s my turn…’ It’s all fun and games until you get punched in the face.

“Then it gets real – what do you want to do? I didn’t have a problem with it at all,” McCaskill concluded. “I felt like I was dominating, especially the other females. I had a lot more power than anyone that I was sparring with. There weren’t a lot of other females to begin with so, from an early part of my career, I sparred with men and older teenagers – people who were faster and stronger than me. That helped me.”

What do you make of Jessica McCaskill’s story?