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Walking into Fortivus gym on a quiet Monday morning, I see former professional boxer Bryant Perrella sitting on the edge of the ring, rolling hand wraps in the stillness of the empty gym. Just two years ago, he was training for a world title. Now, he’s turned to mentoring following a medical diagnosis that would force him to step back from the ring.
As a kid, Perrella started boxing with kids from around the neighborhood and even started a fight club at school that was eventually shut down for its unsupervised meetings in the woods. After joining an actual boxing club, he would win an amateur boxing match just two weeks later, leading to a two-decade career with a professional record of 17-3-2 (14 KOs) and an amateur record of 70-9.
But after receiving results from a series of blood tests, Perrella was forced to decide whether or not to give up his dream of becoming a world champion.
He’d had plenty of surgeries throughout his career, but injury after injury would reveal a pattern he could no longer ignore: abnormally long recovery times and excessive bleeding after surgeries. In late 2023, Perrella decided to get surgery on his left hand after years of cortisone shots that were degrading the cartilage in his hand. While the surgery went well, his hand wasn’t healing properly – which was nothing new.
This time, though, he knew something was wrong and decided it was time to get comprehensive blood testing.
The blood tests revealed a rare bleeding disorder called hemophilia B, which causes excessive bleeding due to insufficient clotting factor IX, putting a person at risk of internal bleeding. “I had a doctor say I need to try a different sport, that I could die by getting punched in the head or in the knee,” Perrella shared. “I didn’t really quit. I was downplaying it. I was going to keep trying, but I had to hide it from everybody.”
Still shooting for the title, Perrella decided to push through. He was training under former world champion Roy Jones Jr. at the time, who was supporting him through a potential second hand surgery.
“It was really a tough place to be in mentally because one side of me was like, you know what, I can come back, I can still go for the title, and I can win,” Perrella expressed. “But another part of me was thinking, I’m really risking my life.”
Ultimately, the pressure and risk became too much to carry. “I just I couldn’t go through with it. It was too much to hide from everyone, and it was always in the back of my mind, so eventually I just had to make the decision [to step back].”
So, in August of 2025, Perrella announced that he had officially retired from professional boxing. “It was hard. I was thinking, Now what?”
Shortly after, he decided to start writing a book. “In boxing, you develop a lot of characteristics like discipline and perseverance,” he explained. “So I decided, well, if I’m going to hang up the gloves, I’ve learned so much, I can pass all this knowledge down. So I just put it all in a book.”
The Master Boxer: The Definitive Guide to Becoming a World Class Fight was published in September of last year and is chock full of advice on boxing, mindset, nutrition, and more.
Then, in May of this year, Perrella moved up to Toledo from Florida to join Michael Farrar at Fortivus boxing gym.
Farrar is a Certified USA Boxing Coach and black belt in karate and jiu jitsu, and has worked with top fighters across the globe for over three decades. Perrella met with Farrar in 2020 after his first professional loss, and the two remained close over the years.
“I told Bryant I’m going to open a gym up here, and I’d love to have him come up and take a look at it,” Farrar explained. “And so Bryant came up, and I asked, what do you think? He said, I love it, I love everything about the message, the passion, the circuit, everything. So I asked him, why don’t you stay up here?”
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Perrella is now a partner of Fortivus. Their mission is to make the powerful physical and mental benefits of boxing accessible to everyone, and Farrar feels that Perrella has been an invaluable addition. “Bryant’s probably the most intense athlete I’ve ever met, and I’ve known a lot of professional athletes,” Farrar shared. “He’s got a grit about him. He lives it, he talks the talk, walks the walk. The fact that he’s humble, incredibly intense, his story is very uplifting, I thought, this would be a great influence to have on people. And so he just really brings something that the gym didn’t have.”
Since joining Fortivus, Perrella helps people train during regular gym hours and also teaches a competitive class Monday-Thursday at 7pm for people looking to spar and advance their boxing techniques.
“I enjoy being able to see people get better. I can see them have a particular mindset, sometimes they’ll be having a tough time in life or work or whatever,” Perrella says. “And they come here and you can them build that confidence as they go, they start to look happier, more fulfilled because they’re actually progressing in something.”
For Perrella, developing a perspective shift is what he’s most interested in. “Being able to communicate with different people, different emotions, different temperaments, helping them with the right way to think about situations or about boxing has been fun,” he adds. “For example, [someone might say], ‘I’m out of shape.’ No, you’re just training hard, you’re supposed to be tired.”
Perrella and Farrar hope to continue growing Fortivus into multiple locations around the country. “Our plan is to continue to grow,” Farrar shared. “And this is kind of where Bryant wants to be in his career right now is helping people develop, whether it’s in the athletic endeavor, mental coaching, or life coaching, and so I’m there to support him on these things.”
In addition to teaching, Perrella also recently gave a talk to the boys’ football team at St. John’s Jesuit High School and strives to continue giving motivational speeches in the future. He hoped the young athletes would walk away with a more resilient mindset when it comes to setbacks, not only on the field but in all aspects of life.
“I wanted them to think about what is it that’s holding them back, what is that challenge they’re going through in life, it can be on a football field or not, and just to think of what’s in their control that they can do to change it,” Perrella shared. “So, if I hurt my hand, for example, I can use my other hand, I can make this one better, I can do all these different things that I normally wouldn’t do. Anytime an injury occurs, I would find the adaptation to it, I would find what’s in my control and just execute on that, and that transfers to anything in life.”
Having met Bryant myself after starting at Fortivus two months ago, his unrelenting dedication to both the craft and those seeking to learn it is clear to see. Joining a boxing gym as an adult is humbling to say the least, even coming from someone with an athletic background, but the environment cultivated by Bryant and the rest of the team makes the experience worth returning to.
Despite having to end his professional career prematurely, Bryant hasn’t slowed down in applying all that boxing has taught him over the years. He’s found new purpose in his transition to teaching and sharing the same philosophy that brought him to the other side of so many hurdles throughout his life.
“When you’re going through challenges and adversity, setbacks, you name it, rather than ruminate or focus on all the bad things that are happening, the central theme of my story is, what can I do?”
