The barman's face was a picture. I’d interviewed Alexis Rufus over tea in the the Lansdowne Club. After we’d said goodbye, the head barman, Istvan, said conversationally and with a faint Hungarian accent: “She vos nice, Mr Brown.” “Yes,” I said. “She’s the British Muay Thai Kickboxing champion.” Which is when Istvan’s jaw dropped.
Alexis Rufus is office manager at Knight Frank’s Mayfair office on Mount Street, as well as PA to the guy who heads up that office – “the best boss I’ve ever had” – Richard Cutt. But that’s not all she is. Petite, softly spoken and charming, Alexis is also a fierce fighter heading for a world title. It’s no accident that her theme tune – the song she gets into the ring with – is Elvis Presley’s (You’re the) Devil in Disguise.
“The lyrics say you look like an angel but you’re a devil in disguise,” Alexis says, smiling, “and that’s what people often say to me: ‘you look so angelic and lovely and petite, but when you come out into the ring it’s like this devil in the ring’. And I quite like that. I quite like having these two characters. But it’s still me.
Always sporty, Alexis got into kickboxing because she wasn’t keen on working out alone on machines in the gym. “A friend who was also a member of my gym said she’d been to a kickboxing class and I should come too,” Alexis says, “so I went along, tried it out and absolutely loved it. That must have been six or seven years ago.”
Alexis was lucky, the class was run by European Flyweight Crown holder Cathy Brown. “I got hooked on her classes,” Alexis says. “I started off going once a week and that turned into four times a week, and then I just got a thirst for it.”
Keen to compete, she found a fighter’s gym in Victoria and met the man who is now her personal trainer, fighter and multiple title holder Mati Parks. It took Alexis a year to get fighting fit, training three times a week, once a weekend and with a personal training session thrown in. Five years ago she had her first fight and won.
“It just went on from there, really,” she says. “I got more and more fights and I was winning.” She adds: “It’s one of the best feelings in the world when you win a fight and you’ve trained so hard for so many weeks and it pays off. The moment the ref puts your hand up, you’re the winner. It’s the most fantastic feeling; everything becomes so worth it… I get very welled up and I can’t stop smiling. I usually jump about the ring a bit. It’s just brilliant.” In September last year, Alexis became UK MF English Champion Muay Thai Kickboxer at 56kg. In December, she won the British title at 55kg. And when we met she was waiting to hear if a European bout had been fixed. “I train very hard,” she says. “I train six days a week and on three of those days I train in the mornings as well as the evenings.”
Now, at 30, she has her eyes on a world title. So, what would it mean to her if she won? “I can’t put it into words,” she says thoughtfully. “I’ve given up a lot of my life to this sport. I don’t say that negatively; I’ve chosen to do that and I’m happy to do it. But a lot of my time is either at work or at the gym and it does put a strain on my relationship with my boyfriend because I’m not at home a lot… I suppose to win the world title, all these years of hard work, the early mornings, the late nights, the aches, the pains, the injuries I’ve had … it would all be worth it just for that. I’ve always admired people who can commit to something and achieve it. It would mean the world to me, getting that title.”
Time for a cheeky question, then. Does being a British kickboxing champion help her handle her boss, Richard? “I think it’s helped me hugely in my line of work,” she says diplomatically. “The reason I’m able to be calm under pressure and collected at work is that I get a lot of my frustration, the anxiety and aggression out when I’m training. It’s just helped me centre myself.”
Thai boxing champion Alexis Rufus is a devil in disguise from Adele Jarrett-Kerr on Vimeo.
We caught up with Alexis on film after she won her second European title. It looks like she's heading towards a world title too.
