One day she’s taking a right hook to the jaw. The next day she’s floating a Puccini aria across the room (think Madame Butterfly). On Sunday, she’s at the Block Church in Northwest Philadelphia, hands raised in worship, leading a congregation through praise songs.
And people still ask, “Which one are you?”
Alyssa Wilmarth laughs, because the answer is … all of them.
At thirty-three, Alyssa has built a life at the crossroads of fists, faith, and full-throated song. She’s sparred with world champion boxers in sweaty Philly gyms, stood on beauty pageant stages in sequined gowns, belted soaring opera classics in intimate Philly cafés, and led hundreds in worship, her voice carrying a different kind of power.
To outsiders, those identities seem impossible to reconcile. To her, they are inseparable.
The Accidental Boxer
Alyssa’s life in boxing began the way many obsessions do … by accident.
As a kid she shadowed her mom in gyms, graduating from the daycare room to treadmills, soccer fields, Spartan races, and even cheerleading.
But by sixteen, gloves had replaced pom-poms. “Boxing kind of chose me,” she said. “I started with group fitness classes, and it just stuck.”
What began as a side passion kept tugging at her, shaping her fitness choices through college and beyond. By the time boutique boxing arrived in Philadelphia, Alyssa was ready to step into the spotlight as a coach.
At Rumble Boxing Philadelphia, bass music rattled the mirrors and white gloves flashed under strobe lights. Alyssa managed and coached there for four years.
She loved watching others discover their own power in the bag. “One of my favorite things is when someone comes in timid, like they don’t belong, and then they leave with their head high, like, ‘I did that.’ I get chills every time.”
Through multiple ownership changes, Alyssa stayed steady as the heavy bag, training clients who wanted less Rocky and more rhythm. But in March of 2025, the unexpected happened. Rumble Philly closed its doors for good.
For many, it would have been a knockout. Alyssa rolled with the punch.
She kept her ties strong with franchise management, and within weeks was tapped as regional manager for sister locations in Princeton and Westfield, New Jersey.
She also widened her orbit as a freelance coach, teaching boxing, fitness, and Pilates classes part-time at places such as Greystar Apartments, The Sporting Club at The Bellevue, and Barry’s Bootcamp.
The patchwork schedule might look exhausting on paper, but for Alyssa it’s another form of training. She calls it balance, stability from the regional manager role, and joy from stepping back into the studio with clients.
From the Studio to the Ring
Rumble was the performance, but Philly’s fight gyms were the truth. “You start hitting mitts for fun, and the next step is sparring,” Alyssa said. “Suddenly you’re telling yourself, ‘I’m going to get hit. It’s going to hurt. But I’m here anyway.’”
Her introduction to the sport of boxing came in 2015, when she met Phil Filmore at Sweat Fitness. At the time, she was a regional manager looking to stay in shape and train for pageants, but Phil’s quiet knowledge of boxing pulled her further in.
What began with pad work turned into touch drills, then catch drills, and eventually sparring, an evolution that led to her very first amateur fight.
“Phil was the one who opened that door for me,” Alyssa said. “He gave me the courage to try.” Phil recently passed away, and Alyssa carries his influence with her every time she steps into a gym.
It was during that same period that she first crossed paths with Isaiah, a pro fighter who would later become her full-time coach. Stocky and soft-spoken, Isaiah had a way of making fighters believe they belonged inside it. He became a close friend.
Under Isaiah’s watch, she sparred seriously for the first time. The opening punch rattled her.
“The first time I sparred, I froze when the punch landed,” she admitted. “I wanted to cry. But then I thought—no, I’m still here. That was the moment I realized I could do it.”
When Isaiah stepped back from training to focus on his own career, he made sure Alyssa didn’t lose her place in the sport. He passed her on to his own mentor, Coach Rev, a fighter-turned-trainer known less for trophies than for toughness, community, and a no-nonsense style of teaching.
If Isaiah lit the spark, Coach Rev stoked the fire. Rev runs his camp out of Marian Anderson Rec Center in South Philly, where the floors are scuffed from decades of footwork, the air smells of sweat and leather, and the sparring is relentless.
Alyssa is one of only two amateurs in his circle – the rest are pros. Every round is a test. Under Rev’s eye, she honed her craft, learning to keep her head moving, slip shots, and answer back with force.
“He’s a drop-and-roll type of coach,” she said. “Always telling me to move my head, slip the shot, and come back heavy. It fits me, because I’m always looking for that one clean power punch.”
Sparring with Legends
Alyssa soon found herself surrounded by elite fighters. It was baptism by fire.
She sparred with Heather Hardy, nicknamed The Heat– a Brooklyn cult hero and former WBO featherweight world champion, beloved for her toughness and habit of fighting through bloodied noses and broken bones.
“Heather was great with me when I was just starting,” Alyssa said. “She even let me come down to her New York gym and made sure I had someone in my corner.”
She also crossed paths with Kali Reis, a well-known competitor at both amateur and professional levels. Reis came to prominence by winning state and national titles in her native Australia before going on to take six World Championships.
But standing beside such names also revealed the inequities of the sport. “Top men make millions. Top women might make $20,000 a fight. It hasn’t met the moment yet.”
For Alyssa, though, boxing has never been about paychecks. It’s the high of a clean punch landing, the camaraderie of the gym, the strange comfort of willingly walking into a fight.
“One great sparring session can carry you for a month,” she said. “You leave thinking, I deserve to be here. I’ve earned this.”
That sense of belonging carried her into her third amateur bout in March, a fight that ended with brutal efficiency. In the second round, a perfectly placed body shot broke her opponent’s ribs. The referee waved it off. Alyssa’s hand was raised.
She remembers being almost disappointed. “I was kind of bummed it didn’t last longer,” she admitted with a laugh.
But the win brought something more valuable than rounds of experience: confidence. Proof that all those hours in gritty gyms could translate into triumph under the lights.
Now the stage grows bigger. On November 6, she’s set to fight again, this time at The Main Event hosted by Boxing on Broad at Philadelphia’s iconic 2300 Arena – the same venue where world champions have been made.
Crowns, Categories, and the Mirror That Talks Back
Boxing wasn’t the only stage where Alyssa was learning to perform under pressure. Long before her first ring walk, she was stepping under very different lights – in heels and gowns.
In college in Kansas, Alyssa was crowned homecoming queen. A pageant recruiter reached out soon after, dangling the possibility of her competing for the title of Miss Kansas.
She entered, not fully knowing what awaited. “They tell you to buy the crown and sash, pay the entry fee, and suddenly you’re competing,” she recalled, laughing at the absurdity.
But inside the pageant world, the rules were unspoken and the expectations unyielding. “In 2012, the look was very specific,” Alyssa said, shaking her head.
“Styled barrel curls, the same shade of lipstick, the same silhouette. The winners were usually white girls with long, straight hair. I was mixed — Black and white. I didn’t fit the mold they were rewarding.”
Onstage, beneath the lights, the competition became less about gowns and talent and more about identity.
“As a mixed person, you start asking yourself … do I flatten into one category to fit in, or do I walk in with my whole self?”
Alyssa kept showing up — Kansas, Pennsylvania, year after year — sometimes climbing as high as a top five finalist. But eventually, the crown stopped mattering. The real prize was clarity.
“Pageants gave me poise, discipline, and the ability to answer hard questions under pressure,” she said. “But acceptance? That didn’t come from a panel of judges. It came later … when I realized my full identity is an advantage, not a compromise.”
Those lessons stayed with her. The discipline to prepare, the poise under scrutiny, the resilience of hearing “you don’t fit” and stepping out anyway.
Even in pageants, where the crown felt out of reach, Alyssa’s voice set her apart. Her pageant “talent” was classical singing, and like her other passions it would carry her onto a professional stage.
Singing High Notes
If boxing taught her discipline, opera taught her release. Alyssa studied classical voice throughout college, even performing professionally with the Tulsa Opera chorus after graduating.
“Opera feels like boxing,” she said. “It’s emotional, it’s powerful. The note hits, and it’s like landing the perfect punch. You feel it all the way through.”
She laughs describing the training. “People think opera singers just stand there and sing. Nope. It’s a full-body sport. You’re controlling breath, diaphragm, posture, memory. Sometimes I leave rehearsal more tired than after sparring.”
In Philadelphia she found a surprisingly vibrant opera scene, full of open mics and nonprofit collectives. She sometimes still performs in cafés or small church halls, intimate spaces where every breath counts.
She even worked briefly at Victor’s Café in South Philly, a restaurant where waiters double as opera singers.
Like many aspiring artists, she earned her stage time at Victor’s by putting in the work behind the scenes. “I loved Victor’s and have a lot of respect for people that do that for a living so they can be full-time artists,” she said.
“It was fun and exhausting. You’d bus tables for hours just to sing twice a night. Honestly? Sparring is easier.”
Still, she insists the two art forms fuel each other. “Opera keeps me graceful; boxing keeps me grounded. They both remind me I can take up space without apology.”
Opera gave her voice strength. Boxing gave her body resilience. But faith, Alyssa says, gave her both a center and a purpose.
Finding Faith
As a child, the closest things to spirituality in Alyssa’s family were stories that leaned slightly dark. She remembers talking about witchcraft and ghostly encounters that happened to her mom as a kid – things you’d expect to only hear about in movies.
Religion wasn’t really part of her upbringing. “We tried attending church consistently for maybe a year when I was a kid,” she said. “Christmas, maybe Easter. Nothing committed. I wasn’t raised Christian, and I didn’t understand it.”
So, when a friend from the gym invited her to The Block Church in 2019, she almost brushed it off. But curiosity pulled her through the doors of the Philadelphia congregation known for its youthful, multicultural energy.
What she found wasn’t fear or superstition. It was something startlingly different.
“The first time I walked in, I felt light—like something I’d never felt before,” Alyssa said. “The opposite of everything I’d grown up with. It was love. And I wanted more.”
Soon she was volunteering, then leading worship. She now often leads the congregation from center stage, her operatic training repurposed as devotion.
Faith reframed everything, even boxing. “When you step into the ring believing you’re fearfully and wonderfully made, it’s a different kind of weapon,” she explained.
And yet, she admits, some Sundays feel harder than fight nights. “The crowd in church can be scarier than a crowd at the gym,” she said with a laugh. “When you sing in worship, it’s about surrender. That’s harder than throwing a punch sometimes.”
But surrender, she learned, doesn’t spare you from the punches that land outside the sanctuary.
A Season of Hard Hits
When we met, Alyssa admitted she’d gone quiet on social media. Not because she lost interest, but because life came swinging hard.
“My stepdad Chris passed away, and then very shortly after, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she said. “It’s been a very hard season.”
Her stepfather, the man who raised her, had masked his illness so well that the family had no idea he was in decline.
“We were all in Greece together a month and a half before he died,” she remembered. “He was the one making sure we were up on time for the bus. We had no clue.”
Grief gave way almost immediately to caretaking. Alyssa began shuttling between Philadelphia and Kansas City, supporting her mom through chemotherapy.
The rhythm was brutal. Weeks of steady training at her boxing gym, then ten days gone. Each return felt like starting over.
Most would crumble. Alyssa did what boxers do, she stayed on her feet. “You walk in knowing you’re going to get hit. It’s going to hurt. But you keep going anyway,” she said. “Life is the same. You don’t have to sink with the weight—you can choose to carry it, one step at a time.”
She carried that same mindset into the airport check-ins and late-night hospital visits. “It felt like training camp,” she said. “Every time I flew home, I had to remind myself—conditioning, discipline, breath. You just keep moving forward.”
Recently, she got the call she had prayed for. Her mother’s cancer is in remission. Some would call it a miracle. Alyssa knows it’s God’s work.
Philadelphia, Home Sweet Home
Like many transplants, Alyssa speaks about Philadelphia with a convert’s devotion. “When you come across the bridge from Jersey and see the skyline, it just feels like home,” she said.
Her list of favorites reads like a love letter: Old City for its cobblestones, Cherry Street Pier for its water views, Race Street Pier for sunsets, rooftop bars for the skyline. “If it has a view, I’m obsessed,” she admitted.
She and her husband recently bought a house in Port Richmond with the help of a $25,000 Urban League of Philadelphia grant, which supports first-time buyers of color.
The grant came just months after her father’s passing. “It felt like God saying, ‘Here’s your next step,’” she said.
Today, Alyssa is fully rooted in her city, and in herself.
At church, she and her husband Zach lead worship and now oversee Block Groups – small gatherings that minister outside of Sundays.
At work, talk of Rumble Boxing Philadelphia reopening has begun to resurface, giving Alyssa hope that the place where she built so much could come back to life. “It would be a dream come true,” she says, “though there’s still a long road to get there.”
At home, she and Zach are planning to start a family, something she frames not as a pause but as part of the journey.
“Even after having a kid, I’m not stopping. I’ll keep taking amateur bouts whenever I can and turn pro at some point. Boxing’s something I’ll do for as long as possible.”
Optimism, she insists, is her sharpest weapon. “No matter what comes, I believe I’m a winner.”
