#29 - Boxing and Me?

Greetings Beautiful People

This 500 word piece was my entry into a competition last year entitled: "Boxing and Me?"

At a seminar with the late great Manny Steward, London Jan 2011 

The Arena
Sweat, adrenaline, the smell of cracked leather,
Drained, in pain, I must be insane.
Dizzy, but busy, returning to the well.
Tell myself: "just one more", working to the bell.
Slip, and slide, nowhere to run and hide,
I enter The Arena to see what I have inside. 

January 2011 
It's my second time sparring and I'm putting on my headguard. There is so much adrenaline coarsing through me that my hands are shaking and I can't get the chin-strap through the loop. I've tried 3 times already. People are watching, I'm scared and I wonder if anyone can tell. Eventually I ask the coach to do it for me while I try to control my breathing. I haven't been hit clean yet and I wonder how I'll deal with it when the inevitable happens. How will I react? I feel slow and there is no spring in my legs, in the second round I get hit flush with a right hand and my nose is bleeding heavily. I don't panic and I don't freeze, I'm too busy trying to hit him back.

January 2013
It's my first session for 3 weeks and it's time to work off some of that Xmas dinner. A guy has asked me to spar and I'm putting on my headguard. He's an ex-pro, cruiserweight to my welter (40 pounds heavier) and the last time we sparred (a year ago) he was wild. He's exactly the sort of person I don't spar any more. My hands are steady as I slip the chin-strap through the loop and I smile wryly as I get a flashback of myself 2 years ago. I feel the adrenaline building in my body but it's like a good friend now. Rocket fuel. I know it makes me sharper, stronger, faster. My energy begins to shift as my concentration narrows, it's like the way sound changes when a car enters a tunnel. The bell rings. Long arms. He wants room so I close the distance backing him up and hitting him with short bodyshots and right hooks while hardly getting hit. The pros ringside cheer me on. He lands one big shot in the third round but I shake it off and walk him down grinning at him as I back him into a corner and throw a four-piece. Two of them land. 

I started boxing because I had  a fear of it and I couldn't die with that fear still in me. My instincts turned out to be right, boxing reveals and develops character like nothing else I've ever known. If you are a bully then boxing will reveal it, if you are a coward boxing will uncover it, if you lack determination or self-control it all comes out in the ring. It's like placing your character under a microscope.

Boxing has given me more poise and inner balance and made me stronger. There isn't a day that passes that I don't shadow-box, the rhythm, the movement is now as basic to me as breathing.

So to answer the question "Boxing and me?" I'd say there is no boxing AND me any more, because boxing is part of me.

"That's the funny thing about boxing, it gets in your blood and it's hard to get out. You fall in love with it, as hard as it is."
Joe Frazier, Box Like the Pros



Have fun out there. 

Dx