Jessica Bernier is beautiful and introverted. She’s intelligent, understated and works as a model when time permits. Calm and competent, she runs an office of 60 realtors for the company she co-owns with her husband, Mike.
All of this gives little, if any, clue as to what she does on nights and weekends. Besides her day job as a real estate professional, Jessica Bernier is a boxer. And not just a boxer—a fighter. “I’m a pressure fighter,” she says. “I come forward, high volume. I’m always coming forward.” (Asked how she squares the boxing and modeling aspects of her life, she says, “You are really careful not to get punched in the face right before a shoot,” while Mike quips, “A lot of makeup.”)
Mike is Jessica’s trainer, coach, and No. 1 fan. A solidly built man with a very strong handshake, Mike is a boxer himself. Though their work-together, fight-together, train-together relationship sounds like it could be a prescription for marital discord, it works fabulously for them.
“The training for a fight is brutal,” Jessica says. “It’s three-a-day workouts: CrossFit mixed in with weightlifting, running, boxing training and sparring. And you eat constantly.”
“But a lot of fighters will do the same physical training,” Mike says. “It’s the mental side of things that makes you finish stronger. That’s what separates champions from the rest.”
As her trainer, it falls to Mike to make sure she’s ready for her fights, and part of that is mental toughness. “He’d wake me up at 2 o’clock in the morning saying, ‘We are going to work on this,’” Jessica says. “And that also helps me prepare myself mentally because I’m tired and I don’t want to do it.”
“That’s the secret in the ring,” Mike says. “It’s unpredictable. You can’t train for that unless you train unpredictably.”
How It All Began
High school sweethearts, Mike and Jessica both grew up in White Bear Lake. They married in 2002, and in 2008 their real estate careers took them out to San Diego, where they drove by a boxing gym every day on their way to work. “I took one class and I was hooked,” Mike says.
Jessica joined a month later, and it was love at first punch—after one class she knew she wanted to compete. Training heavily and with Mike’s ardent support, she developed her seek-and-destroy style and started fighting.
Within two years, Jessica landed in Kansas City, Missouri, for the 2010 Ringside World Championships. After knocking out her first two opponents, Jessica found herself in the ring with Christina Barry, a tall, hard-hitting fighter out of Winnipeg, Canada. This fight was for the world title and would stamp Barry’s ticket to the Olympics.
About a minute and a half into the first round, Barry landed a solid right that disoriented Jessica, launching her into the ropes. “I was able to recover from that, but without the mental training of thinking, ‘I can adapt, I can do this,’ I wouldn’t have been able to keep going the same.”
Asked what a hit like that feels like, Jessica says, “With all the sparring you get used to being hit. But my nose got broken with that, too, so I was bleeding. It’s kind of devastating, kind of a panic. You just have to get your senses together.”
But true to form, Jessica rallied and continued to build steam throughout the fight. By the third round Barry was tiring, and Jessica, broken nose and all, was delivering flurries of blows that sent her opponent to the corner seeking refuge. By decision, the judges made Jessica Bernier the Ringside Women’s 141-pound Champion of the World.
Beating Barry and winning the world title was a turning point. Jessica had a record of 11-0 and five knockouts. She had proven herself on one of the world’s toughest stages, and another major stage was coming up in a couple years: In 2012, the Olympics would feature women’s boxing for the first time. The Olympics were a real option, but Jessica’s real estate career was flourishing and she couldn’t just walk away from it for two years.
The entrance of women’s boxing into the Olympics has legitimized it in many peoples’ eyes. While Jessica’s friends and family have been staunch supporters of her passion for boxing from the outset, the boxing community often views women with skepticism. When a woman walks into most boxing gyms, there’s a “the yoga studio is over there” attitude that lingers until the woman in question dispels it.
“Jessica has never trained with girls,” Mike says. “She trained with guys and she has put guys on the canvas who had to roll out of the ring afterwards, so she wasn’t getting the easy route. The women who stand up and prove themselves get respect, but it takes a while.”
“And it’s continual,” Jessica says. “You walk into the same gym and it’s a different crew; you’ve got to do it all over again.”
Though the boxing community may have been initially slow to accept women, both Mike and Jessica agree that it’s a great community, which also provides structure and discipline for many at-risk youth. After a year-plus hiatus to focus on their careers and let their bodies heal, both Mike and Jessica plan to rejoin that bunch.
Look for Jessica Bernier, the fearsome fighter from White Bear Lake, to step back into the ring in 2015.
(Photo by Scott Palmer)
Boxing By the numbers
- 2012 Women’s boxing became an Olympic sport
- 2014 The International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame was established
- 7 female boxers were inducted that year
- 8 inductees in 2015
More info at International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame
