Category: Competing
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The 100 Rounds of Sparring Rule
How many rounds of sparring should you have before you enter your first amateur boxing competition?
I love this question, and coaches enjoy arguing about it. We’re naturally argumentative. We’ll punch you, if needed.
Seriously. If you make the transition from boxing fitness to sparring, you’re almost always going to be asking yourself the question “Should I compete?” And if you decide to compete, how do you know when you’re ready? Is there a physical bar? Is it about conditioning, or skills? Or is it primarily mental? A mix of both? (more…)
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How to Wrap Your Hands for Boxing Competition
When you’re training for boxing, you’ll probably wear regular boxing wraps or gel gloves underneath your boxing gloves for protection and support.
When you compete under the USA Boxing sanction, the rules on what you can use to wrap your hands, and how you must wrap them, are very specific.
Ringside did a particularly good video on this, and it’s well worth watching the entire 16 minute video (and there’s a funny treat at the end). (more…)
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How Amateur Boxing Matches are REALLY Made
Getting a good amateur boxing match together is never, ever a blissfully effortless ride on the pugilistic merry-go-round. It’s the most complex, chaotic, and frequently emotional mess you ever did see.
If all you ever do is show up to enjoy a local fight night it might look smooth, from the outside. But it absolutely isn’t. For the 4 to 6 hours prior to the doors opening at the average amateur boxing evening, there is more anarchy and disarray than a high school cafeteria lunch period on homecoming Friday with no teachers. (Sorry, did I just give you a flashback?)
Here’s why. (more…)
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How to Pack Your Coach Bag for Amateur Boxing Events
Since I’m usually officiating, I’m not the one who packs the gym bag to take our competitive boxing team to their events, but sometimes I pitch in to help the other coaches remember everything we need.
And finally I wrote it all down, since that’s infinitely preferable to madly scrambling around at the last minute, trying to remember what all our boxing team will need once they get to the competitive arena.
Btw, I searched the internet and didn’t find ANYTHING to help you pack your competition bag, so if you happen so see something, please link it in the comments. Just the fact that I couldn’t find anything made me wonder if I was missing something…
Of course, this will be the ONLY post on the subject to include toilet paper, sparkly elves, chainsaws, and Nicki Minaj. Read on. (more…)
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New USA Boxing Rules for Amateur Competition
The scoring of boxing events at the 2012 London Olympics was a mess. Yes, we were thrilled to finally see the ban against women’s boxing in the Olympic Games lifted, and despite heavy inequalities between the number of men versus the number of women allowed to compete, there was a tremendous showing of support. But the outdated, inefficient, and highly-variable computerized scoring rules that have governed amateur boxing for years finally caused enough problems to grease the wheels of massive change in the sport.
The International Boxing Association (AIBA), the body which governs USA Boxing, hammered out several long-awaited changes to the scoring system to bring sanctioned amateur boxing more into line with the way pro boxing is scored. (more…)
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Before You Compete in Boxing…
Because an amateur boxer’s passbook runs from January to December, there’s a lotta “getting ready to fight” going on in boxing during the last few months of the year. You need to be in good condition and getting close to your weight category position.
And Thor knows you want to get that first looming match over with, out of your system, and finished with (for good or ill) so that you can move the hell on and start to settle into the competition groove.
Because the truth is that you operate at about half — or less — of your usual power at your first show. Why? Because of the intensity, the anxiety, and all the (normal) insanity of a boxing event. Plus it’s just fucking scary, that’s what.
So here’s how to dremel the killing edge right off that wicked blade, and make it a weapon that works for you, rather than slicing you to the bone when you go to pick it up. (more…)
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The Hairball to Joy Ratio in Competitive Boxing
I’m still in that slightly blurry stage of tired where I don’t seem to have much to say about losing my fight in Atlanta this week. Actually, I have plenty to say (it’s what I do, no?), but very little of it is about the fight itself. I think part of that is the fact that my 6 minutes of actual boxing were overwhelmed by all the other craziness involved in making this happen.There’s this giant hairball which goes with boxing that can sometimes overwhelm the joy of the sport, and I think I’ve spent a lot of time experiencing the hairball (and poking, prodding, and trying to untangle the wretched, nasty thing) and my hairball vs. joy ratio is out of balance this time.
Am I disappointed that I lost? Fuck yeah. Who isn’t? But it’s also really okay in another sense. I had a marvelous opponent (of whom I made a new friend), got to hang out for a very little while in a sparkling firework of a town with a range of interesting people, and was privileged to fight in an extremely well put-together event.
I lost primarily for two reasons.
1. I was feeling incredibly cold and low-energy and didn’t move enough. She was pretty good with her feet. (All that pro tennis she used to play, if I had to guess.)
2. While I could work my defense pretty well by the second and third rounds, I absolutely failed to get inside her longer reach to build up my score. She had a long right cross that scored most of her points.
Really, that’s it. It wasn’t a horrible fight or anything; and if it had been sparring I would have asked for another 5 rounds and we both would have gotten some good work in. So, overall the actual fight — while I didn’t perform like I wanted to — was really okay. And I would LOVE to box with her again, truly.
But that 6 minutes counted for maybe 5% of the whole experience.
The rest was a giant, pulsing hairball of…doom. Or irritation, if I dial back the dramatic echo a bit.
And I can see you want to know more, more, more! So let me see if I can unpack some of the hairball for you, you lucky, lucky reader. If you’ve some experience of competitive boxing of your own, you already know much of this, but if not, you may be interested in seeing how the other 95% of training for and experiencing an actual match can sometimes be.
If you’re already fit, don’t do a long training camp
This is the first time I can ever remember where I simply got sick and tired of training. Training ate my life this time, and I crashed and burned, and (sort of) recovered. I didn’t enjoy this one the way I normally enjoy boxing training. It was just too much. Biggest lesson learned? Shorter training period! 6 weeks sounds good. More sounds like overkill.
The single best way to train for a fight is to spar
This was also the first time I have ever trained for a fight and had so little sparring. I was able to get weekly sparring up until Christmas, then only one sparring session in the month before the fight. Sessions were repeatedly cancelled, sparring partners were out of town, and other normal things.
So I didn’t get sparring. And I still believe that the single best way to get ready for a fight is to spar. Once a week, minimum; twice a week is better. At least 5 to 8 rounds each time. (Along with your other training, of course.)
It’s hard to hold weight steady when life is crazy
I was having trouble controlling my weight in the last few days before my fight. I wanted to weigh in at exactly 145, but two days before the fight I was 144, the day before I was 143, and somehow during the long drive to Atlanta I lost yet another couple of pounds.
I know those truckers thought I was nuts when I hauled my scale out onto the rest stop parking lots, kicked off my shoes, and weighed myself three or four times. If my weight dropped below 140 I could lose my fight, and I arrived at the hotel before weigh-ins at 141. During the drive down I’d been eating power bars, pouring water down my throat and trying not to pee. And most of all, I was twisting myself into a knot worrying about it.
In the end, it all worked out — I just barely tipped 144 at weigh-ins. And had the best pee of my life immediately afterwards. Still, no fun was had.
You want to be good at handling unexpected events
I hate surprises. I try to factor as many of them out in advance as I possibly can. It didn’t work out so well this time.
I was running close on time getting to my hotel, and because I couldn’t find a place to park anywhere to go check in, I got a little lost looking for a spot. Then I got lost, period. (No, I don’t have a GPS.)
When I slipped into a vacant slot on the street and got out of my car to go see the names of the next cross-street up, the meter guy came and started to ticket me. I ran back and stopped him but was too angry and in a hurry to ask him for directions. I got out of there, quickly, found another spot, and logged on someone’s unlocked internet access and checked Google Maps, keeping my engine idling and watching for overzealous meter ticketers.
Eventually I found my hotel again, discovered a metered parking slot after circling a few times, then the parking meter wouldn’t take my dollars. I put in the few coins I dug out of the bottom of my purse and bought just enough time to race into the hotel to check in and ask where their damn hotel parking was.
That was when I learned that downtown hotels don’t provide parking for guests. You pay a good bit extra for that ($25/day), and if you plan to use a parking garage rather than the hotel valet, you have to pay every time you come and go.
I raced over to two nearby garages, mindful of my meter time running out, and asked two very annoyed parking attendants for rates. I did some quick calculations and realized I’d have to pay the whole day rate more than once a day (due to coming and going), so I booked it back to the hotel and told the hotel valet where my car was parked and hoped he’d hurry, because my meter time was out.
And by the thundering waves of Poseidon, I had to pee.
By the time I got up to my hotel room, I saw that my weight was perilously close to 140. Shit. And the only travel food I had left was an apple and (I’m going to admit this) a few Corn Nuts. I ate it all, and chugged water. I had to get to the weigh-ins, and I was pulled about as tight as a Joan Rivers facelift.
The giant hairball was gaining girth and momentum.
Beware of drinking, odd food, and sleepless nights
I hope I’m far too smart to screw up by drinking too much the night before a fight (I only had one much-enjoyed cocktail after weigh-ins), but I sometimes forget the many other factors that go into lowering your performance levels and increasing your stress.
I wish I had brought my own foods. I normally always do this, because I am such a weird eater. I love to talk about junk food, but the truth is that I eat extremely clean most of the time. Almost no fast food, no processed stuff, no fast carbs, no refined sugars. All of which is fine, until you go on a trip and eat whatever is available. Vending machine garbage, fried food, white bread and pasta, etc. After a (too) long training camp of stricter-than-usual eating, I didn’t realize how hard the crap food would hit me. BYOF, y’all.
Add to this mix a shortage of sleep. Is it hard for you to sleep in a strange place, too? I remembered to bring some over-the-counter sleeping pills, but they don’t always work. Feh. Bleary.
I walked downtown with a crazy friend (Hi, Amy) to Peachtree Center and had a great brunch on fight day though. Kale, grilled chicken, broccoli, mushrooms…real food at Cafe Momo.
Unfortunately, that was the last time I had a chance to eat before the fight. BYOF, as above.
Triple your estimate for the time you’ll spend WAITING
The hours of waiting feel endless, like sitting through the 1934 version of Les Miserables (running time 5 hours, 5 minutes) followed by 2012’s Rock of Ages (2 hours, but feels like 9).
This is possibly the single factor I hate the most about ANY official fight, and the reason why sparring is the real joy-filled heartbeat of boxing for me.
There are good reasons for all the waiting you’ll do. At weigh-ins, boxers not only weigh in and have their passbooks and gear checked, but they all have to go through a physical, usually with only a single physician in attendance. I’ve been at some fight nights where there were over 60 boxers, all of whom waited for 3 or 4 hours in order to be checked out. (Then they had to wait for their turn to fight.)
Fights are expensive to put on, almost nobody is paid, and it’s a logistical nightmare unless you have dozens of volunteers who already know the routine and can help everyone get where they need to be in an orderly or timely fashion. Even when you have enough volunteers, it’s a lot of thankless work, and it takes a lot of prep time to pull one off, even on the day of the event.
Fighters typically have to be at a venue at least a few hours in advance of start time; for this particular night the cab dropped me off around 4:30 pm, and the event was set for 7 pm. That was kind of a record for me, only having to be there 2 hours or so in advance, although of course then I had to wait another several hours to fight. At my last fight weigh-ins started at 9 am, and fights didn’t begin until that same evening.
In this case, I had six hours of waiting at the event for six minutes of ring time. That’s a suck burrito, baby.
The fancy is for the audience
Most amateur fight nights, you’ll be lucky to have a folding chair to sit on, whether you’re a boxer or not. But even the time I did an exhibition match at a big-arena pro fight where the arena was nice, the digs for the boxers were still pretty grim. Pretty much everyone was crammed into a tiny 8×10 room with ancient carpet and a grimy couch; hands were wrapped by coaches in the narrow hallway as fighters shadowboxed, and there was always a wait to use the sole bathroom.
Unlike most amateur fight nights, the venue for my recent match was gorgeous, with spotlights, a DJ, a three-piece jazz band, bartenders and caterers with spreads laid out on crisp white linens for fight attendees. Valets opened doors for women in sequined gowns and 4-inch heels, who strolled on the arms of their impeccably-dressed men down a red carpet (not kidding) to a brilliantly and professionally lit step-and-repeat for photo ops.
The fighters, however, were sequestered behind a filmy curtain in a long, narrow strip at the far edge of the main event room. For some reason, there seemed to be a shortage of chairs, and all of the 6 or 8 chairs that could be snagged were appropriated by coaches for hand-wrapping. Everyone else stood, sat, or laid down on the poured concrete floor, which was fiercely cold.
The doors to the venue were all kept open so that the crisp January breeze flowed through during the long hours of waiting before the official start time arrived, making that concrete floor particularly wicked. I spread my thin scarf out to keep something between me and that vicious concrete, and laid down like many of the other fighters with my head resting on my gear bag. I kept both my lightweight jacket and my heavier coat on until shortly before I walked out for my fight. I don’t know how all the women in cocktail dresses kept warm; it’s hard to imagine I was the only hothouse flower in the place.
By the time of my match I was feeling like someone had laid a sizzling-hot curling iron down the back of my throat. Even two days later my throat is still painfully sore. I’m pretty sure it was that damned cold concrete and chilly breeze.
But this is the sort of thing you simply ignore. It’s part of boxing. The fancy is for the audience, and if they were as tough as you, they’d be waiting to get in the ring while you sipped your third dirty martini and smiled for the camera.
Whine if you must, but suck it up. You might not be able to make the hairball your friend, but it’s damn well gonna be your roomie.
Brace yourself for human drama cyclones
I took my iPod and earbuds, but there’s only so much you can do about the human drama happening all around you. Hell, even I turn into a human drama cyclone (albiet a smallish, boring one) in the 15 minutes or so before I roll under the ropes. Boxing calls up strong emotions in everyone, and when you’re in extremis, all your wretched, painful baggage comes barreling to the fore.
Worried about money? You’ll feel it strongly before your fight. Just split up with a boyfriend? You’ll be consumed with it before your fight. Shit going down at work, home, where ever… it’s all going to choke you like a mouthful of rancid, greasy flour and you’ll wish you could spit it out and get a clean breath of air and a double vodka to clear your head and dull your pain. Good luck with that.
You have nothing to do but wait, for hours and hours. You’re most likely going to be in uncomfortable spaces. You’ll do nearly anything to avoid having to obsess about your fight. So you’ll probably interact with the other boxers, hear their stories, and because emotions are so ungodly high, be buffeted about by their dramas.
And because every boxing match has a loser, you’ll see the women who are crushed by their loss, and the guys who had no idea they’d be taken down the way they were. There will be cursing, frustration, tears.
I do try to insulate myself emotionally from some of it, but the truth is I’m also compelled by it. I can’t help but want to hear the stories and be a part of the incredible, scary, wonderful, terrifying thing that is happening to all of us together.
But it’s also exhausting.
You may have to fight stone cold
I surfed the seas of human emotion for nearly the entire wait. I had a few minutes of joy shortly before fighting, followed by a miserable realization that I was feeling emotionally and physically tired, stiff, and absolutely freezing cold. Also my throat hurt like flaming hell. I asked someone to work pads with me for a few minutes and just that few minutes left me oddly weary. Trouble on the horizon.
I was so chilled down during my first round I couldn’t get my body to move. That warmed up a bit as we went, but 6 minutes does not give you much time; you gotta work your ass off or risk losing the fight. I was barely moving and it was all over before I ever felt warm. I certainly never broke a sweat.
This was the first time I considered that I may actually fight better in the heat than in the cold. But this was just one small tangle in the giant hairball, and not even a particularly unusual one. Most amateur events are held in gyms and community spaces that are drafty in winter and stifling in summer. For that matter, most boxing gyms don’t have reliable heating and cooling. Working HVAC is not something a boxer should need to function well.
Factor in the toll that travel takes
For me it wasn’t so much the 7 hours or so that it took to get to my fight location; it was more about the other hairball components, including getting around while in Atlanta. And getting home, which was a nightmare.
I don’t have a GPS, but I had run off a series of Google maps: How to get to my hotel downtown (noting one-way streets), how to get to and from the weigh-ins from my hotel (which was walking distance), and how to get to and from the fight venue from my hotel. All of my maps were essentially useless for various reasons, and in the end it felt like so much stress that I simply decided to hire a cab to get me where I needed to go. Which, of course, also drove up the cost of the trip (3 tanks of gas, 2 nights in a hotel, two nights of hotel parking, cab fares, tips, a couple of meals — around $300).
The real stressor in this case was getting home again the next day, as an ice storm moved in and forced me to change my travel route in order to try and stay ahead of the worst of the weather.
My slightly lengthier route helped me avoid the storm for the first 6 hours, then I crossed the NC state line and the sleet wall hit me like a sledgehammer. Traffic slowed to a crawl as we struggled to drive on sheets of packed ice, with more sleet falling hard. I passed at least 10 wrecks, including one pickup truck flipped over onto its cab. I drove between 15 and 30 miles an hour for the next three hours in low visibility and terrible conditions, finally arriving home as my wiper blades were failing and the right half of my windshield was entirely obscured by ice. I had to break a heavy layer of ice just to get my door open.
I hate winter.
And 3000 words later…
I’m ready for a break. I’m ready to recover the joy of boxing, which I find most in sparring. My next fight will damn sure be in-state, and if I can have TWO big wishes, during warm weather.
Meanwhile, I’ve vented a bit about the hairball of competitive boxing, and I can’t believe you actually read the whole gawdawful thing. I love you for that.
And I love boxing, I truly do. But it ain’t no bed of pink Bourbon roses, y’all.
Special high-fives to my worthy and powerful fight opponent Lisa Belcher, the incredible boxing women of Atlanta, and Terri Moss, promoter of Atlanta Corporate Fight Night. More fist bumps to Cheryl Smyth and Connie Gomez-Joines, NC boxing girlfriends who made the long trip to see the fights, loaned me boxing gloves at the last possible minute, bought me drinks, loved me despite my moodiness, served as my “entourage,” and who just may be on a future ACFN card.
And most of all to YOU. For cheering, listening, and continuing to push along with me on this crazy-ass journey of ours. You inspire and amaze me.
PS: I had my long-awaited Cinnabon cinnamon roll tonight, sore throat be damned. It was amazingly delicious.
Image by Action Fighter Media
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The “Screw It” Moment of Training for a Fight
If you had asked me last Friday “How’s training for your fight going? How are you feeling?” you might have heard me growl and scowl and say I didn’t give a damn anymore. I was wholly, mortally sick. Of. It.
Done. Screw it, I’m outta here.
So I made the reasonable choice and did a flaming, flying swan dive down into the dark, seedy mental nightclubs where I proceeded to party down while throwing the finger to everything boxing related. To mark the special moment, I stopped into Bojangles and devoured a 2-piece fat-enhanced meal with a side of dirty (that was especially satisfying) fries AND a motherfucking biscuit. With butter.
I thought about driving up to the Krispy Kreme, but I was feeling so warm and sated after the Bo-party all I wanted to do was head home and sleep it off. I decided I could finish out with a hefty double shot of 12 year old Macallan’s Highland single malt scotch, but by the time I got home I was too wasted on fried chicken and biscuits to find the liquor cabinet.
I slept like a sabertooth tiger with a belly full of giant sloth.
And I proceeded to very studiously NOT TRAIN for the next three days.
Which would have been especially sparkling and glittery, except that prior to the flaming flying swan dive, I had trained at my cheapie $10-a-month gym with a guy who put me through an hour-long upper and lower body workout that (I found out later) just happened to hammer the holy living Elvis out of my calves and triceps.
On Saturday I was surprised at the level of pain and misery cramping up my legs and arms, and I knew I was in for a rough Sunday, because I get hit hardest by 2nd day muscle soreness when I screw up like this. And sure enough, rolling out of bed and putting my feet on the floor Sunday morning was the sheerest kind of torture. It took me hours of patient work to get everything stretched out and functional, and Monday was only marginally better.
Still, I was off the training wagon and didn’t care — upcoming fight be damned. If I could have summoned the cosmic unicorn wish fairy and been able to get in the ring and have my match Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday night I would have done it in a skinny minute just to get it off the event horizon of the sucking black hole that was my mental attitude.I started to repent on Tuesday morning. Which was reasonably smart, considering that the church of boxing was scheduled to hold high holy services just 9 days hence.
I put on my sackcloth and ashes and headed to Second Round for my punishment. As you might guess, I wasn’t all smiles. I pretended I’d never even thought of, never even considered the ring name “Relentless.”
I got in without too many people noticing, and quietly set up the ring with a double slip line. My calves wept silently. I ignored them and thought about fried chicken instead.
And Cinnabon. I thought about Cinnabon a lot.
But not my fight. I resolutely didn’t think about my fight. And I noticed something interesting.
My quads were fairly happily taking me smoothly and easily under that slip rope, back and forth like a well-oiled machine. My heart rate stayed steady and my jabs weren’t catching on the line. Everything was working. For the first three rounds, and the next three, and the next three. By round 10 I was feeling normal again. Boom. I wanted to say, Hey all you doctors out there, quit prescribing Wellbutrin and Elavil and Zoloft! Tell your patients to shadowbox 10 rounds with a slip line! After eating dirty fries and biscuits!
My coach ambled up and I confessed (some of) my sins. He was nonchalant. Rest is good, he said. You got this. Then put me through a solid pad workout for another 6 rounds. I love my coach.
Powah was mine, badasses. I did a few victory dances around the ring while he pretended not to see. He probably didn’t roll his eyes.
So I finished out with speed bag and jump rope rounds, after which I strolled home like a convict whose prison sentence has been unexpectedly commuted. And here I had thought I had flushed all my training down the toilet. I have much to learn, clearly.
Did I mention the fact that I went to the bookstore on Saturday and read the first 5 chapters of Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Body? I have some modifications I’m making to my training, more on that later. (My husband is all like, You’re such a control freak.)
Meanwhile, my lessons learned:
- Ten to twelve weeks is waaaaay too long for a training camp for attention-deficient me. Why did I start that early? Excited, I guess. Seven weeks is probably optimal for most people, assuming one is in reasonably decent shape. Five weeks would be tight but do-able.
- Factor in “screw it” days or weeks, especially if you’re doing a longer training camp.
Sometimes good enough is, amazingly, good enough. All is well in Whoville. “Relentless” rides again. After the fight, meet me at the Cinnabon.
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Boxing Win in Wilmington
I had my first fight with my Second Round team in Wilmington.
It’s always a toss-up, fighting Masters, as to whether I’ll actually get an opponent. I weighed in at an event last month and my opponent didn’t show. Women over the age of 35 who want to compete in the ring are few and far between, then there is the further narrowing of the field because of weight class, experience level, geography, and the random unexpected injuries, family demands and other contingencies.
Because it’s so difficult to get opponents, my goal has become to get one fight every year. Last year got checked off with my October fight. (The December fight was classified “exhibition” and doesn’t count toward my goal.) This year got checked off with my fight in March. I’m feeling a little gleeful to have met and exceeded my goal for this year now!
My opponent got connected for this match through a coach in Wilmington about 3 weeks ago. He had let my coach know she was light and we’d have to get our weights closer in order to get the match. I got down from 142 to 135 and I think she came up from 125 to 132. And she drove 6 hours from Virginia to be at the event; I only had to drive two hours.
We both arrived just before weigh-ins were scheduled to begin. There were only 6 women out of the 44 total boxers fighting at this event, and only one Masters bout; I picked her out immediately. She was really beautiful, and just a bit shorter than me. I smiled and spoke to her. Not everyone wants to chat with their opponent in advance of a match, but she was entirely polite. We made weight, turned in our passbooks, and parted ways to wait out the endless, miserable hours of the day until we could get our fight.
I love pretty much everything about boxing except the day of a fight.
Well, and cutting or gaining weight; those both suck, but they are at least bearable. The endless hours of waiting for a tiny, six minute test of your skill and power are excruciating.
Everyone has different tricks and coping mechanisms, but there’s no escaping the endless circus of weigh-ins, passbooks, medicals, getting your food/liquid intake right and timed, sitting for hours in metal folding chairs, finding a bathroom (this one didn’t have toilet paper), constantly tamping down your anxiety, keeping an eye on the time, meeting your opponent, staying limber, and maintaining sanity in the loud din of the crowd.
Every time I go through it I take a paperback to read, but this never helps. There are too many things you must pay attention to during the long hours of waiting. Even having my Shuffle (finally got the playlist right — the quiet stuff from my exhibition fight had failed at fight #2 in Atlanta, so I went back to hard rock) didn’t help much, because I constantly had to take out my earbuds to answer questions, find out what I was expected to do next, help someone find scissors, etc., etc., etc.
Finally I dressed out and sat for my coach to wrap my hands. I normally love this ritual, but in this case, I was wracked with anxiety because my fight got moved up at the last minute so I felt late, after all that damn waiting. I straddled my metal chair, draped my arms over the back where Coach Massey could reach them, and spent the next 15 minutes staring at the bright silver dog tag on his chest. It says “One Bad Jab.” It was his ring name, from his pro fighting days.
“Do you miss fighting?” I asked him.
“Hell, no,” he responded, laughing and flashing his gold tooth. For just a moment I felt entirely aligned with his sentiment. Why would anyone want to go through this misery on a regular basis?
“I miss sparring though,” he continued, and I nodded in understanding. All the guts and joy of boxing without the hellish hours of a fight day.
Once you’re wrapped and gloved, you become entirely dependent on your coaches. I had to ask Coach Mandy to find my headband and put it on me for the short period before my match. She gave me a drink of water. She found my mouthpiece (in my sock — this is a great place to keep it in the hour before you fight, btw) and checked my laces.
I made my usual joke: “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said as I stretched out and began to move. The big gloves make this impossible, unless you have a reeeeeallly close friend.
“Can’t help you there,” she said quickly, and we both laughed a little.
I continued to chatter nervously, almost mindlessly: what I should remember, how I should move; combos, tactics, offenses and defenses.
At some point she stopped me quietly with a hand over my gloves.
“You’ve already trained for this,” she reminded me. “You’re overthinking it. Just let your body perform.”
She was absolutely right, and it was the perfect advice, the best possible thing I could have heard.
The match before mine was finishing. I stood ringside amid the din of screaming onlookers as the two fighters ahead of me battled. I couldn’t hear Coach Massey’s advice anymore. He held pads for me but I couldn’t hear the combos. I shuffled like an anxious racehorse, frustration rising in me.
Finally, the closing bell.
Massey held one pad. “Gimme the power,” he said, “Jab, right.”
I sighed in deep relief. If there is one thing I can do, this is it. My jab was fierce, and the right was at full-scale knockout level. It was like a pistol shot: bip-BAM.
“Again.”
Bip-BAM. Bip-BAM! I could hear it echo in the rafters.
“Keep going.”
Six more combos in a row I gave him, every one as perfect and loud and solid. He grinned and shook his head, and his gaze did a slow circle of the crowd around us; all eyes were now on us.
Later I realized that the eyes of my opponent were probably also on us. Massey knew what he was doing, letting me show my power like that. Letting me go in confident in my own strength.
Outside of the actual fight, it was the best moment of my entire night.
I rolled under the ropes and felt the deep satisfaction of the ring settle around me. Time to do what I do.
My opponent surged out with a flurry. I tapped out measuring jabs and began to circle, assessing what I was up against. It’s probably better to go ahead and claim the early part of the first round, but I wasn’t really expecting such a long, light string of flurries. She had punches in bunches, no doubt.
It didn’t take me long to see what I would be doing. Her hands were busy, but she was staying squared up a bit, giving me a sweet little pipeline down the center to her face. An invitation to my power right.
Bip-BAM, bip-BAM, bip-BAM. Yep, those were actually gonna work.
My jabs weren’t connecting every time, but my rights were absolutely solid, and every single one was on target. I suppressed my glee and put my brain back in gear. She was not bringing pain, but she might be scoring with the sheer number of shots she was throwing.
In the amateurs it doesn’t matter if you can throw a bomb; a hard hit scores the same as a medium hit, so long as it connects. Bombs are intimidating, but they aren’t 3-pointers.
I had to shut down her scoring machine. I clinched, got my arm around the back of her head and squeezed and leaned, hard. The ref nearly decked me himself, breaking the clinch and yelling at me for my patently illegal move. But it broke the onslaught and didn’t cost me. They’ll warn you before they take a point.
I glanced over to see how my opponent was taking it. Her face was flushed from the power rights already. I absolutely had to keep her on the end of my jab and prevent her inside game.
She rushed back out and we worked hard to the end of the round.
At the break both of my coaches told me I was ahead, but I wasn’t confident about it. I knew I wasn’t moving my feet and I thought the judges might be counting her shots higher, even though they were coming mostly from the sides. I felt like I’d only taken one or two solid shots to my head — nearly everything else was on my arms and shoulders, which meant my guard was good, but I wasn’t moving around enough.
The second round was where I began to rely on Coach Massey’s strategy. Once you’re in and have tried your game, it’s unbelievably helpful to have someone calling your shots and guiding you through the hard mental work while you do the physical work.
My attempts at longer combos were not scoring all the way through; my hooks often missed because I wasn’t getting in position and getting them off before she moved. She was fast, and seemed to throw four and five shots at a time.
Massey 86’d my hooks. “Straighten it out,” he called from my corner. “Give me the straight right….Thank you.”
The right was scoring and I still had all bars in my power meter. I wasn’t gassed. My feet were not moving, but my one-two continued to hold the fort.
She was slowing and starting to pant. The left side of her face was beginning to swell. I felt like a robot, an automatron, an idiot on repeat. Surely I could do something besides this, surely. Lord I wanted finesse, grace! I wanted to move less like a wooden toy; I wanted to show beauty as well as power. Why can’t I be pretty in the ring??
“Go to the body,” Massey called from the corner.
I sent up a mental thank you, and suddenly had something new to do.
“Double the jab,” he called, and I did. I did lots of things, but there was one thing that worked every time…
At the round break, I had the feeling we were going change gears. I don’t remember what either of my coaches said (other than their reassurance that I was still ahead), I mostly only recall going back out, still feeling slow but strong.
Massey held me back, over and over again, with a steady call of “Wait for her…” She was struggling now, and I could stand and deliver. If I could time it just right each time, she would come forward into my shots.
“Don’t advance,” he warned, “Hold…”
It was hard, because I felt I had to advance to score, but he was right, she was coming and with a surge of joy I realized I was beginning to see her shots arriving. Midway through the third I ducked a spectacular all-in jab-right, and she went sailing past me; the crowd roared. Belatedly I realized I should have come up with a quick left hook.
I sighed inwardly. Someday I may finally put all the pieces of this game together, but not today. Today I was a particularly skilled kindergartener, and my rights would have to carry the day.
And they did.
My opponent was wonderful. She never quit, she barreled forward and burned energy at a ferocious rate. She threw far more combos than I did. She didn’t let the hard power put her out. She gave game to the very last bell.
I deeply respect that. ANY woman — or man, for that matter — willing to go through what a competitive boxer goes through deserves the title Bad Ass. Sara (I never heard her last name), I salute you. You were awesome.
I was happy to be handed the gold medal, and once again I was stunned at my instant “I want to do this again” response, even though I’d spent the 24 hours before my glorious 6 minutes in pure anguish.
There’s no rational explanation.
Only the challenge to be better. Only the relentless push to master my body and make it perform in concert with my brain in the complex intricacies of this sweet science.
And the sheer, brutal pleasure of a fight.
Image: Coach Willie “One Bad Jab” Massey with me after the win. Thanks to Cathy Linkous for the photo!
