Tonya Harding
Tonya Harding
Tonya Maxene Harding is an American former figure skating champion, a two-time Olympian, and a two-time Skate America Champion. In 1991, she won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and placed second in the World Championships. Harding was the second woman, and the first American woman, to complete a triple Axel jump in competition. In 1994, she was banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Association and pleaded guilty to hindering the prosecution following the attack on fellow skater Nancy...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFigure Skater
Date of Birth12 November 1970
CountryUnited States of America
I have put a lot of effort into boxing. This is not just a one-fight thing. I am making it my second career. I am not working eight-nine hours a day for nothing. I am 32 and just getting started, but I have the basics down. I know I still have a lot to learn. I feel I am continuing to improve everyday. I think I can take a punch okay because I have got hit pretty hard in sparring. I feel I can fight for three or four years.
I am in absolutely the best shape of my life and ready to go. I am not nervous at all. Physically and mentally, I have never felt better.
I still put on the skates once in a while, but I do not look back. I had a great career. I hope to have a great career in boxing, too. I am not bitter at the way some people may look at me. Sure, I am trying to turn my image around and be a lady. But you can be a lady, and an athlete, too.
There are some similarities between boxing and skating. Both require power and grace. Physically, boxing is obviously much harder. I weighed between 105-108 pounds when I skated. I will weigh around 120 for my first fight. I just ate a bunch of carbohydrates, which was great, to help gain some weight. I did not lift weights at all.
Truthfully I don't remember much about anything after the Olympics 'cause I, I lost everything.
Skating was put on the map, supposedly from me Everybody made a life and a livelihood, um, except me.
It's an image that the media has given me as a bad girl, and the only reason they gave me that image is just because of the few things that have gone wrong in my life, and also because I grew up living in a trailer.
I have never been the stereotypical figure skater.
One thing I like about boxing is that I will not have to deal with the same kind of politics that I had to in skating. In boxing, it is not about your appearance, or how your costume looks, what color it is, or how much it costs.
I moved around 13 different times before I was in fifth grade, not having money, not having a lot of friends.