Personal training manager Danielle Perkins opens up about her career as a pro boxer — and the role Equinox played in her journey.
Danielle Perkins remembers spending her childhood days parked in front of the TV with her dad, watching Mike Tyson knock out his opponents without breaking a sweat. The elite boxer “never got hit” in his fights, and to a young Perkins, “it looked like a lot of fun,” she recalls with a laugh. It was only natural for her to want to grow up to be just like him.
Understandably, her parents had other — safer — plans. They handed her a basketball instead.
Perkins went on to become an All-American athlete in high school and a basketball player at St. John’s University. After graduation, she was a pro-baller overseas until a car accident brought her career to a standstill. In 2012, Perkins became a manager at Equinox, a job that took up so much of her time, she struggled to squeeze in workouts. The new gig, combined with the general stress of recovery, left her searching for a new athletic outlet. Enter: boxing. “Honestly, I've never wanted to hit somebody so bad in my life before,” she says. “I needed to do something in order to, like, get that frustration out.”
She started working with a trainer at her Club in New York City, learning how to properly hit a mitt and perform footwork correctly — all the “boring” parts of taking on a new sport. She adapted to the different required reaction times and spatial awareness, plus the need to break into your competitor’s personal bubble. “Your reaction time has to be quick, and you have to respond,” she says. “And unfortunately, if you don't respond, unlike basketball, it's not like someone scores two points, you could get knocked out.”
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Soon enough, Perkin’s Equinox Coach told her she was ready to bump up to the next level — and that meant training at a serious boxing gym. She started working out at a gym around the corner from her house and, not long after, competed in — and won — her first fight, knocking her opponent out in about 30 seconds, she recalls. “My first fight, I fought a girl who had [done] 13 fights, and I didn't know what to expect. She punched me in the face, and it just kind of, like, inspired me,” says Perkins. “I just unleashed the beast on her, and I ended up knocking her out.” Her second fight, at the amateur New York Golden Gloves tournament, had a similar outcome.
Those wins solidified Perkins’ athletic prowess and legitimized her as a boxer, but it didn’t thwart imposter syndrome. “Your mind plays all these tricks on you,” says Perkins. “Going into a fight, you train for the fight, you know the fight's gonna happen, you're fully aware of what to mentally expect. But literally, the day before, there is this, like, anxiety demon that shows up that creates all this doubt. And you have to quiet that demon, because it'll cause you to freeze up.”
After a short hiatus from the sport — a result of a broken leg, a cross-country move to Texas, and a new gig helping to open Equinox River Oaks — Perkins joined a new boxing gym in Houston and competed in two more fights to become an elite fighter. From there, her success was a rapid climb. She made the cut to join Team USA, and in 2019, Perkins won gold at the World Championships.
Now a personal training manager, Perkins credits part of her success to the education she’s gained over the years as a Coach at Equinox. She knows how to program her training to prevent injuries, fuel herself properly in a sport that requires cutting weight, and recover with different modalities. “Education is definitely half of it, and the other half is application and understanding how to do things properly,” she explains. “...When I started to apply it to myself, I learned more about what my body is capable of and also how it could look. It’s impressive what your body can do.”
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Five years after her Worlds victory, Perkins is still immersed in the cut-throat environment. Just last month, she battled a fierce competitor in a fight that would later be deemed a literal bloodbath, she says. “There was blood everywhere — I broke her nose, busted both eyes, busted her lip,” Perkins recalls. “I beat that girl silly.”
The two would have been mortal enemies if this were a sport like basketball, she says. But in boxing, what happens in the ring, stays in the ring. “The thing about it is, we hugged after, which I don't think most people understand,” says Perkins. “The sport is one of those blood sports, but when someone can stick around like that and take a beating like that, I have the most respect for them, because anyone else would have quit.”
It’s a mentality Perkins brings to every athletic feat that comes her way — even if it’s out of her wheelhouse. “I always take things too seriously. Whenever someone gives me a challenge, even if I don't know anything about it, I'm like, ‘I'm gonna beat you,’” she says. “That's just my natural instinct, like, ‘Oh, I’ve never played pickleball? It doesn't matter, I'll beat you in pickleball.’”