Rita Bullwinkel has never boxed, but she was a water polo player. Like the protagonists of Lightning stroke (The Second Periphery/Sixth Floor), who face off high in the ring at a seedy Reno gym, traveled miles to compete with other girls who trained 20 or 30 hours a week. "As I moved away from my time as a young athlete, I asked myself: Why did I do it? What really motivated me? And even now, after writing the entire book and speaking to so many journalists, I don't think I have an easy answer," explains the American writer, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. "One of the conclusions I've come to is that these girls want to be seen. Outside the ring, no one sees them the way they see themselves. When you practice a sport like boxing, you have to look very closely at your opponent, observe their body, recognize that they have power over you, that they can get hurt. In every area of their lives, they feel that someone is looking at them like that, as people with potential, with strength," adds Bullwinkel.

Here is a heroic novel. Because it is bold and electrifying, and because it elevates these poor girls to the status of heroines, who, in the hands of any other writer, would be little more than supporting characters. What another writer would have resolved with a sordid, dirty, and dark portrait of unfortunate women who have found a way out in boxing, a young debutante named Rita Bullwinkel (California, 1988) has decided to narrate as an epic legend, a mythical tale with female protagonists fighting for a place where they can exist. Enough with pantheons of male athletes with perfect bodies: make room for the muscular curves of the female boxers of Reno, Nevada.

"It's four o'clock in the afternoon, a new day begins", sounds in the Club Boxeo Vega de Rubí. Sandor Martín (Barcelona, 1993) shares with the Estopa the fact of having achieved success from the most working-class neighborhoods of the capital of Catalonia and its surroundings. The Muñoz brothers grew up in Cornellà and Sandor grew up in Nou Barris, where he has his boxing school and where he trains, the KO Verdun gym. He has not lived in poverty, he does not do drugs and he does not make humiliating remarks about his rivals. He neither practices nor likes the stereotypes of the boxing world that have fueled the behaviour of some of its protagonists and the films that have been made. The Catalan boxer simply had a dream and he has put all his youth at the service of this dream.

In a small premises on Rambla de Prim, in the Verneda district of Barcelona, ​​Abner Lloveras (Barcelona, ​​​​1982) opens the doors of his gym. "I opened it a few months ago," says the Catalan martial artist while sweeping the tatami. When he was a teenager he started practicing kickboxing, and now, at 42 years old, and with extensive experience in mixed martial arts (MMA) fights, boxing and jujitsu, he has decided to take a step forward and create his own combat club.