Learning how to box was a pivotal moment in Ronald Mixon’s life. Now he is making waves as a heavy middleweight pro boxer. The southpaw fighter has only lost one of his nine matches.
On Friday, September 29, Mixon will fight Adrian Taylor in Dallas, Texas. The bout will be televised on beIN Sports. Taylor, a cruiserweight from Mesquite, Texas, has gone undefeated since his debut. After four matches, Taylor is ranked 105th in the United States; he is also an orthodox boxer.
“My goal will be to stay away from his right hand and his will be to stay away from my left,” Mixon said. “The advantage is in my favor because there’s more right-handers than left-handers, so I’m used to fighting right handers.”
To prepare, Mixon has been training for at least an hour a day, along with doing conditioning work and running. He noted how maintaining a proper diet is the key focus for the bout, eating properly gives him energy.
“I do love to eat, so that’s the hard part, getting ready for these fights,” Mixon said. “You got to stay away from certain foods.”
The 6’3” Mixon towers over most of his opponents with a 75” reach. His matches rarely surpass five minutes. Mixon is ranked 34th in the nation and 182nd in the world, only fighting through 16 rounds in his career.
Mixon’s only loss came in August 2016, when fighting Carlos Gongora. The eight-round match ended in one when Gongora landed a TKO victory. The bout was televised according to Mixon.
“I’m used to beating people like that, so for me to go through it, it kinda put me in a different perspective,” He said. “I was too worried about the T.V., I wasn’t focused on the fighting.”
The feeling of hurt Mixon went through paralleled the feeling of losing his mother as a teenager, as mentioned in former Sentinel Sports Editor Jason Lewis’ 2011 article “Redemption Through Boxing.”
Mixon believes that his mother would be proud of the man he has become, a far cry from the at-risk youth that was veering down the wrong path so many years ago.
“I think that she would be happy, I think she would be excited,” he said. “She would have been happy and she would have been real supportive of it.”
Since the loss, Mixon decided to do his own promotion and managerial work. He picked up a fight against cruiserweight Michael Glenn on July 15. The match only lasted for one round, Mixon won by KO.
The fight against Taylor on Friday is a fight for redemption for his first loss as a professional boxer.
“We took it in good spirits,” Mixon said. “To—you can say—to right my wrongs.”
