Growing up, most people were taught not to hit girls, but Kelli Cofer takes pride in doing just that.
Cofer, a 23-year-old boxer from Willard, Ohio, is scheduled to fight Friday at the Schottenstein Center at 7:30 p.m. for ESPN’s “Friday Night at the Fights.” Her opponent is Terri Blair, who is 22-3 amateur boxer.
Although Cofer is 4-0-0 with one knockout, she never expected to end up in boxing, she said.
“I like boxing now, but two or three years ago, I would have laughed if you would have told me I’d be boxing,” Cofer said.
Three years ago, Cofer was kickboxing, attending the University of Cincinnati, majoring in mechanical engineering and maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
“UC didn’t have anything with a biomedical program, and I wanted to work with prosthetics,” Cofer said. “Ohio State does, so I transferred here.”
Cofer is taking the quarter off from school to focus on her boxing. She has not taken classes at the main Columbus campus, but at the branch in Mansfield.
“I don’t know when I am going to go down to the main campus. If I take classes next quarter, I would be in Mansfield,” she said.
Cofer said she regrets not finishing school before pursuing boxing, but the motivation for her first match was money, which she was in need of at the time.
“I was 13-0 with 10 or 11 knockouts as an amateur kickboxer. Then I turned my pro debut in kickboxing. I fought a world title fight and lost a split decision with a broken arm, and I gave up 19 pounds. That loss drained all my fight money. I couldn’t get any kickboxing fights,” Cofer said.
“The guys that I trained with in kickboxing had also been boxing, so I was like, ‘Hey, I might as well box.’ At least then, it will help me pay for school. Boxing kind of just evolved out of that.”
Like many female boxers, Cofer had experience in martial arts and kickboxing. Through those sports, she traveled from New York to Los Angeles and places in between to compete in tournaments.
Her father and trainer, Jim Cofer, said some boxing skills came easier to Kelli than others.
“The natural stuff that came to her was the timing of her punches,” he said. “She started out in kickboxing and karate, so she was more orientated around kicking, so she really had to work on the punching skills.”
Cofer was quick to agree with her father in regard to her punching power.
“In my kickboxing, it was all kicks. I would use my punches sometimes,” she said. “Most kickboxers kick to set up their big straight right, but I would use my wussy little punches to set up my kicks.”
In Cofer’s professional boxing debut in Detroit, a four-round fight, she said she was taking a beating by her opponent, Brenda Rodriguez.
“I was flat out getting the crap beat out of me. She knocked me down on my butt in the first round. I did not know what to do,” Cofer said.
She thought the fight was over, but after making it through the first round, she got a wake-up call from her father.
“All I could think was, ‘Oh my god, dad, I can’t kick.’ And he was like, ‘No kiddin.’
“I didn’t even know what to do, but then I got back to the corner and it was, ‘You do what I say.’ I don’t even remember the fight, anything about it,” she said. “All I remember is my dad saying ‘now’ and ‘boom,’ then I’d do it, ‘now, boom.’ It was what he said that got me through it because I couldn’t even tell you what happened that whole fight.”
Mickey Scodova, who also trains Cofer, has known her father since before she was born. Scodova said the key to her victory in Detroit was being intelligent and listening.
“She did what we told her to do in the corner. The first girl Kelli fought was heavier than her, but she out-boxed her and won the fight,” Scodova said.
Scodova is no stranger to big fights. He was the 1986 United States World Kickboxing Association champion. He was also a sparring partner for Prince Charles Williams, the former IBF Light Heavyweight champion.
Jim Cofer said he trusts only himself and Scodova to train his daughter.
“I’ve seen this game get a little vicious with people who aren’t really concerned with the people who are fighting,” Jim Cofer said. “That’s my top priority and that’s his top priority. He’s not interested in making a couple of bucks, and I’m not interested in making a couple of bucks. We’re more interested in protecting my daughter.”
Outside of the ring, Kelli Cofer can be mean when she wants to be, but is usually kind and down to earth, her father said.
“Kelli is a really nice person with the capability of being as mean as a rattle snake,” he said. “She treats everyone equal. She does not buy into this game of ‘Oh, he’s important and that person isn’t.’ Forget all that.”
Two people who are important to Kelli Cofer are her mother and older brother. She visits her mother, who lives in North Carolina, whenever possible, she said. However she can’t visit her brother, Kory, because he is in Afghanistan flying for the Air Force.
“I’m pretty emotional about my brother. My brother bought me this big crystal ball music box that had a dragon in it. I busted that the other day and almost cried because that was probably the only keepsake thing I have ever had in my life. That ticked me off,” she said.
Though she is used to living in Ohio, Cofer has not always stayed in the Midwest.
“I was down in West Palm Beach, Fla., co-oping at Pratt-Whitney, and my friends and I would run all over Florida,” she said. “We had a condo near a big golf course resort. A half-mile up the road, Mariah Carey had a big estate. It was not reality compared to up here.”
She modeled swimsuits in her spare time in Florida when she wasn’t occupied with her co-op, but has tried to avoid the nicknames models sometimes are tagged with.
“Different promoters have given me names like ‘Kelli the Kitten.’ It sounds like a pornography name to me. I say ‘no thanks,’ ” she said.
No nickname will distract Cofer from taking care of business on Friday night. She has been training hard and is focused on her fight.
“Terri better be training as hard as me or she’s going to find out how a pro debut feels,” she said. “I’m not at all into trash talking about anybody, but I know I’m working really hard and if she’s not, it will show.”
