From a Rained-On Playground to the Man Shop: How Lisa Titan Built St Johns Boxing
Starring
Lisa Titan is the owner and head coach of St Johns Boxing, USA Boxing certified. She came to combat sports through Portland roller derby with the Rose City Rollers in 2005, then cross-trained boxing, Muay Thai, and jiu-jitsu before boxing became home. She spent her career in community justice with court-involved youth—work that still shapes the gym's free memberships. She opened St Johns Boxing in 2021, and calls herself a "social entrepreneur."
Sabrina Eveland is a coach at St Johns Boxing, a Bronze-level USA Boxing certified coach and NASM certified personal trainer. She found boxing in the middle of postpartum depression and turned it into a coaching career. She's known for the low-pressure teaching style the gym is built on—permission to laugh, to make mistakes, and to learn at your own pace.
About the Gym
St Johns Boxing is a woman-owned boxing gym in the St. Johns neighborhood of North Portland. Lisa Titan founded it in 2021 in the old Man Shop, a menswear store that anchored the block for decades—she kept the sign in the window rather than let the neighborhood down. Six independent coaches run a mixed-skill program: no-contact boxing workouts, beginner "green level" classes, technique-first light sparring, a small competitive team, and a youth class.
It deliberately fills the recreational middle between fitness-only boxing and hard competitive gyms, and offers free memberships to anyone tied to the justice system, at-risk youth, or in financial need. The room is kind by design—no screaming, no intimidation—a place the coaches sum up as we play boxing.
📍 Address: 8511 N Lombard St, Portland, OR 97203 (St. Johns, North Portland)
📞 Phone: (503) 459-3046
Summary
This is the story of a reluctant owner. Lisa Titan came to combat sports through Portland roller derby, then found her home in the culture of a small, inclusive boxing gym. When COVID closed it, she and about a dozen displaced members kept training on a school playground under a shelter—until someone had to reopen a gym, and nobody else knew how. So she did: a dance studio rented by the hour, then the old Man Shop storefront she gutted and rebuilt with her own hands. Today St Johns Boxing is a woman-owned community gym where people who never pictured themselves boxing find out they love it.
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