Kim Clavel hits the ring to pursue her dream as a boxer, but she’s also a nurse. Two opposites that summarize his dualities.
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Clavel will step into the ring Saturday night at Place Bell against Evelin Bermudez to try to steal her IBF and WBO light flyweight world titles, but since she was little she has vacillated between softness and strength.
“My mother is a caregiver at a center for older people with Alzheimer’s in Joliette and has been there for a long time. I was eight or nine years old and I went there, I gave food to the residents, I talked to the ladies.
“I always had this need to help within me. When I was young, I rescued mice from the mouths of cats on the farm.”
Contradictory
Clavel knows very well that this is all at odds with the sport she plays, but that is how her personality was formed.
“It’s completely contradictory, but I have it in me. I have this slightly cheeky side when it’s necessary, I have to be active and push myself. Boxing nourishes me a lot in that respect.”
And these two aspects of her personality come together every day, which is how she maintains her balance, so to speak.
“I worked with newborns. In the morning I was gentle, I gave them their first bath or put them to my breast, and in the evening I hit a bag while boxing.
“An old woman”
“When I’m home it’s a little bit of both. I don’t have two personalities, that’s generally part of who I am. I’m a pretty lonely girl, I live in my 3 1⁄2 apartment, I’m quiet.
“I like it when people visit, but I like it when they leave. I am happy with my business, my routine and watching my shows in the evening. I’m an old lady at heart.”
For a young woman of 33, she has a somewhat strange way of describing herself.
“I have a great need for generosity towards others. If you go to your grandmother and she makes you eat, that’s me.”
Still helps
Three years ago, Kim Clavel made moves with the hospital where she worked to get a year off to devote to boxing. COVID hit and she spent most of this year helping out at a CHSLD.
Then she received a three-year contract offer from Yvon Michel and was able to settle in Montreal, in the Ahuntsic district. She no longer had to commute between the metropolis and Joliette.
“I saw my performance improve because I focused on boxing,” she emphasizes.
“I feel really lucky. I have a small apartment that doesn’t cost me much, but is in a good location and has a good landlady. I’m a five-minute bike ride from my gym, so I’m fine.”
perspective
However, she does not hide the fact that she sometimes questions herself since her life is atypical.
“Sometimes you ask yourself, I look at girls my age, they have children, a house, they are married. I don’t have any of that, so I wonder if I’m behind in life because I’ve placed too much emphasis on boxing.
“In the end I say to myself: No, I have the life I want. I create memories that last a lifetime. What is happening to me is unique. There are not many people who experience this and it is not luck because I have worked with my heart and soul to be here today.”