Ann Najjar didn’t set out to be on the cover of magazines. Didn’t have dreams of acting in movies. Wasn’t itching for an Adidas sponsorship or hoping to garner the attention of more than a million followers on her Instagram account. She merely wanted to support her brother’s passion.
Fame came anyway.
Najjar and her brother Sean were students together at Monte Vista High School in Spring Valley. Sean was on the wrestling team before eventually moving into mixed martial arts. “He was like, ‘Come to the fighting gym with me,’” Najjar recalls. She wasn’t very active at the time but was curious about the sport. “I went to my first boxing class and I fell in love.”
Soon, she began helping her brother sell tickets to his fights and promoting his merch while learning to coach. As she improved her skills, she quickly became one of the most sought-after boxing trainers in the area. While Sean now occasionally competes in jiu-jitsu tournaments, Najjar found a space in the boxing world that few women occupy: mitt holding. Ever seen a fighter in training, jabbing at a strike pad while the person clutching the pads deftly matches their strikes and absorbs the impact? Najjar is that person.
Her talents garnered her the nickname “Mitt Queen” amongst her male counterparts in the gym. Now 36, the Carmel Mountain resident counts pro fighters, high-profile athletes, and celebrities among her trainees.
“She made herself into her own. She carried the torch,” says Berlin Kerney, a boxing coach at Bomber Squad Academy in El Cajon. He has known Najjar since she was 18. “I feel like she helped [women] think it’s possible to achieve a level that wasn’t really seen before. There was no market, no spot for a female mitt holder. I see a lot of [women] now doing the same thing that she has done.”
But her rise took time. In 2020, when Covid was keeping us indoors, Najjar quit her job at Louis Vuitton (her other love is high fashion) to begin filming her workouts.
“I cleaned up my whole Instagram, got rid of everything, [and] said, ‘I’m going to stick to just mitt work and I’ll show a little bit of myself,’” Najjar says. “I posted my first video with [pro boxer] Jonny [Mansour], and it went viral.”
She began posting regularly, growing over months from hundreds of views per video to sometimes over a million. It’s easy to get lost in her clips. She’s quick, nimble, strong—often meeting the punches of men nearly twice her size.
As her account took off, she caught the attention of actor Michael B. Jordan, who direct messaged her, asking her to be in the latest installment of the Creed franchise, boxing movies set in the Rocky universe. “I didn’t know who he was,” Najjar says. She had to Google him before responding. “He was like, ‘You’ve never seen Creed? Black Panther?’ I was like, ‘No, I live and breathe fighting.’”
Next thing she knew, she was moving to Atlanta, Georgia for a year to work as a trainer for the cast and play herself, Ann “Mitt Queen” Najjar, in 2023’s Creed III. Pro boxers like Canelo Álvarez, José Benavidez Jr., Florian Munteanu, and Tony Bellew shared the big screen with her, acting as characters or as themselves.
“That’s the cool thing about the movie. All the fighters are real; all the refs are real. All the commentators are real,” Najjar says. “I worked with [pro boxer Terence Crawford] on the movie set. He went 28 rounds straight with me. No budging.”
But being a great mitt holder isn’t as simple as knowing how to catch a punch. One of the most important skills a coach can have, mitt holding requires balance, skill, and the ability to clearly communicate with your fighter as they move around—as well as hours of daily practice. Doing it well is a key step on the road to creating a world champ.
“When you’re the holder, you’re guiding,” Najjar says. She determines her trainees’ combinations—as she calls out movements, they follow her lead.
Bomber Squad Academy strength and conditioning coach Tez Avant says Najjar’s competitive nature is a huge part of what makes her so good at what she does. “If there’s an obstacle, she wants to beat it. No matter who’s there, she wants to try to beat them,” he says. “I think that’s the thing that will keep her thriving.”
Najjar trains four to six hours a day. When she’s not in the gym with clients, she’s running to improve her cardio and posting on social media, hoping to inspire more young women to become holders.
“I was Sean’s little sister, and now, my brother is the Mitt Queen’s brother,” Najjar says with a smirk. Sometimes, a bit of sibling rivalry is all you need to become great.
