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The desire to shed weight and relieve racial battle fatigue inspired Dr. J. Luke Wood to take up boxing. Now, the decorated academic is aiming to step into the professional ring.

The session title stood out like a sore thumb amid the dense, jargon-heavy schedule of the Chicago conference: “Boxing for Health and Wellness.”

When the session moderator, Dr. J. Luke Wood, showed up, he was dressed in athletic shorts and a T-shirt. I, on the other hand, was wearing khakis and a polo shirt that felt notably strained around the midsection. I had assumed Dr. Wood would deliver a passive lecture on the intersection of boxing and mindfulness. His wardrobe indicated otherwise.

Technically, the correct term for the audience is attendee—singular. No one else showed up for the 6 a.m. session on day two of the Council for the Study of Community Colleges Conference. The co-moderator—Wood’s close friend and colleague from San Diego State University—chose to stay in bed, later blaming the Chicago/California time difference. Fair enough.

That left just the two of us in the early morning quiet: me and the scholar boxer.

The 41-year-old Wood is an amiable, instantly likable man. Professionally, he serves as Vice President for Student Affairs and Campus Diversity as well as a Distinguished Professor of Education. He holds an impressive list of titles in academia, but the detail that intrigued me most was his side hustle as a fighter—a fact I’d discovered on social media prior to the conference.

Before getting down to business, Wood and I chatted briefly about the Rocky and Creed franchises. He mentioned a recent appearance on Dr. Phil, where he debated claims of discrimination against white people in education. When Dr. Phil announced the end of its long-running show shortly after that broadcast, it made me think of legendary boxers who spent years weaving in and out of the ring.

“Why don’t you stand up!” Wood said, shifting the session into gear.

We warmed up by rotating our arms in wide circles, twenty times forward and twenty times back. He warned me that my shoulders would start to burn. He was right. But it felt good.

Leaving It in the Ring

As we stretched our arms and rolled our shoulders, Wood explained what drew him to combat sports in the first place.

Part of it was purely physical. Tipping the scales at 262 pounds, he knew he needed a drastic change. Traditional gym routines bored him, but non-contact shadowboxing provided the mental stimulation he craved. The pounds began to melt away. Soon, Wood became one of the more than five million Americans who use boxing as a primary fitness regimen, according to Statista data.

When his weight dropped into the 210-pound range, Wood realized his conditioning was surpassing that of casual gym-goers. He progressed to shadow sparring, then to shoulder-and-body sparring—gradually increasing the level of physical contact.

As our mini-lesson began, Wood demonstrated proper stance and emphasized the importance of staying centered over your back leg rather than leaning forward.

“In a sport of inches, if you lean forward too much, you’re going to get whacked,” he said with a laugh.

We covered the fundamentals, starting with the jab—the single most crucial punch in a fighter’s arsenal because it dictates range and rhythm. Head down, eyes on the opponent, shoulder elevated to protect the chin. In the adrenaline-fueled environment of the ring, defense is every bit as critical as offense. Wood views his arms as a sword and a shield: one acts as a weapon, the other as armor.

“You know how you’re leaning off to the side a little bit?” Wood asked as I snapped a jab into the air.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, bracing for a critique.

“That’s fantastic, actually.”

As Wood explained, stepping off the “center line” makes you a significantly harder target to hit. Even when an opponent lands a shot, moving off-angle causes the blow to glance off rather than land flush.

A Counter to Racial Battle Fatigue

Weight loss was only half the equation. The second catalyst behind Wood’s journey was a desire to combat racial battle fatigue—a term coined in 2008 by Dr. William A. Smith, a professor of ethnic studies and education at the University of Utah.

Smith defines RBF as the cumulative result of race-related stress stemming from constant exposure to racially dismissive, demeaning, or hostile environments. Inside the sterile, rectangular conference room—with its muted gray tones, rows of empty chairs, and a dark mahogany podium bearing a mirrored plaque for the Intercontinental Chicago Magnificent Mile—Wood detailed the physical, psychological, and cognitive symptoms associated with RBF.

Anxiety, chronic worry, resentment, tension headaches, elevated heart rates, and emotional exhaustion—Wood had experienced many of them himself. Boxing provided a sanctuary from that toll.

“I’ve found that I can have an exceptionally intense day, go box, and suddenly feel like, ‘Okay, I’m back to ground zero,’” Wood explained.

My arms sliced through the humid morning air as I learned to throw hooks and uppercuts while keeping my feet planted properly. At one point, Wood pulled a leather boxing glove from his gym bag, holding it high and weaving it in front of me like a target.

“Imagine that’s not my glove, but my head,” Wood instructed as I threw punches on command. “Why do you want to keep your head moving? Because a moving target is harder to hit—and if they do connect, it’s a graze instead of a knock-out shot.”

Wood began calling out punch combinations by number. Throwing them on cue while maintaining footwork and defensive awareness was exhausting. Thirty-five minutes in, I was far more winded than I care to admit. Yet the hardest part wasn’t the cardiovascular drain—it was the cognitive load of processing spatial awareness, defensive posture, and offensive strategy simultaneously.

There is no such thing as a dumb boxing champion, Wood pointed out. The best fighters possess a rare, hyper-focused intelligence.

“Every single elite-level boxer is someone who, if they had applied their mind differently, could have been a surgeon or an engineer,” Wood said. “It requires that level of real-time processing.”

Those who work with Wood would argue his own mind operates on a similar wavelength. He is acutely aware of the risks of traumatic brain injury associated with contact sports and takes care to avoid unnecessary damage during sparring, relying on head movement to deflect incoming blows. Still, he remains realistic about the trade-offs.

“If you don’t want to get hit,” he shrugged, “you should probably pick a different sport.”

Completing the Circle

Today, Dr. Wood weighs a lean 188 pounds. He trains twice a day, Monday through Saturday, with a workout on Sunday, on top of a regular strength-and-conditioning regimen. He holds a 3–0 amateur record across unsanctioned and sanctioned bouts. Because of his age, he has transitioned from USA Boxing’s Elite Division into the Masters Division.

So, what’s next for the scholar boxer who refuses to do anything halfway?

“Because I’m at an age where it’s tough to get the higher-level amateur fights I’d like,” Wood said, “I’m probably going to take a couple of low-end pro fights. That’s the goal.”

As our session wrapped up and I thanked Wood for the crash course, we ran into Dr. Soko Starobin in the hallway. She was preparing to host the next session in the same room: a Japanese tea ceremony focused on mindfulness and etiquette. Calm and serene, Starobin possessed the kind of tranquil presence that could lower a person’s blood pressure by fifty points instantly.

She paused to offer a thought on the dual nature of our early-morning workout, referencing a traditional Japanese concept regarding the symbiosis of physical mastery and scholarly pursuit.

“When you bring the mind and the body together,” she said softly, “you become complete.”

I looked over at Wood—the ultimate embodiment of the cerebral and the physical. He smiled, nodding in quiet agreement.

Photo and video by Sal Nudo

This piece is also published in the book Far From Mars – Volume 2: Brief Encounters and Lasting Echoes.