Training for this fight has been rocky, and not the Sly Stallone kind, either.
So last week I called the promoter, two-time Strawweight World Champion Terri “The Boss” Moss, for a serious tête-à-tête. I related the details of my bumpy progress, she invited me to drop everything and come down to Atlanta for a week of training with the rest of the tough, serious women boxers at her boxing club in Decatur.
I gave her precisely 24 hours to get ready for me, then I checked my gear bag, gassed up the Blue Toaster and hit the road. I drove south for seven and a half hours, arrived at her doorstep at 4 pm, and I was in the gym and sweating by 5. Nothing like a little time in the ring to shake off the stiffness of a long-ass drive.
The Decatur Boxing Club is the kind of authentic boxing gym every weekend warrior dreams of, the kind of joint where serious fighters work with world-class trainers on a daily basis. It’s housed in a small brick warehouse with a roll-up loading bay, a single ring, a row of heavy bags, and a thousand fight posters, announcements, and inspirational slogans papering the walls. Banners proudly proclaiming the names of local boxing champs hang from the ceiling, stirring slightly in the current of the industrial-grade fan. A dozen dogs from the kennel in front of the gym bark wildly whenever anyone pulls into the 6-slot parking area, where the tantalizing aroma of a nearby coffee roastery overlays the odor of hot asphalt. Inside the gym smells faintly of Pine-Sol, and the surprisingly powerful sound system pumps out a steady stream of instrumental jazz mixed with a few downtown rhythm-and-blues club beats.
It couldn’t be more perfect.
Terri Moss (pictured above) and her partner Xavier Biggs know what they’re doing. They have incredible amount of history, experience, and know-how. Terri isn’t just a phenomenal fighter, she’s a powerful coach. Highly intuitive, she knows exactly what is mentally driving her boxers, and she understands precisely what sort of approach will help each fighter shift their thinking about the highly stressful, potentially damaging dynamics of this sport. And for technique, she is unmatched. I had called her earlier about an injury to my shoulder sustained during hard sparring. Before I had even described the injury, she said, “You were throwing those right hooks, weren’t you? You have been boxing too much with your arms and not with your body.”
Damned if she wasn’t right.
And it took her about 2 rounds of coaching me through a sparring session to help me discover the refinements I needed in my stance. Getting her changes into my muscle memory will take weeks and months of hard work, but each adjustment she made will dramatically improve my game.
Moss and Biggs have also connected me with Jason Abraham, aka “Jay Fury” — a man who trained at DBC for several years before moving to Raleigh. When Fury and I arranged to meet for the first time I knew him by the black Decatur Boxing Club tee shirt he sported, and I’ve since found comfort in the periodic references he makes to his former trainers as we circle each other in the gravel lot where he’s now giving me some training.
I have so much to learn. I know I can’t do everything I would like before this particular fight, but I definitely have some good things going for me.
And all of you who have been following this saga, leaving comments, sending me messages of encouragement, and writing about this fight have been just as big a part of my journey as my trainers. I can’t imagine doing this without all of you. I know many of you aren’t local to Atlanta (although quite a few of my new gym-mates are there — hollaaaa!), but that doesn’t seem get in the way of your boundless enthusiasm and continual cheering.
Thanks for that, truly. You’re incredible.
If you would like to help me pay for some of the expenses of this fight, you can make a contribution of any size with this link or the button below. I will be deeply grateful!
Need tickets to the fight itself? Here’s the link to get ‘em.
I’ve also created a page with some more information about sponsoring me in this fight. More links and information there!
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