In A Grand Rapids Boxing Gym The Monday After A Floyd Fight

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What I expected came to pass: walk into the boxing gym that Monday, hear loud conversation making use of words like "headbutting," "legal," and "Pacquiao's next."

Floyd Mayweather being a native son, any talk of Saturday's fight was in his favor, the subtleties of sportsmanship drowning in deep loyalty. I'd wanted the opinion of the gym to help pull apart the images replaying in my mind: the knockout punch; Ortiz and his dropped hands; Floyd's empty gaze; the ref looking away. Were they on a break when the knockout happened? And even if the punch was legal, was it cool to do?

Clips are now all over the internet, and I see now that the ref clearly motioned for them to resume boxing. And that Floyd hesitated after that left hook, giving Ortiz enough time to cover, which he didn't take. Bam.

Watching the knockout live, in a theater full of people in Mayweather's hometown, was disconcerting. The break ended quickly, the ref's signal seen by Floyd but few others, which made those final two punches seem particularly menacing. The crowd roared, but my jaw dropped; it felt like watching a street fight. Clean shots. The guy just standing there. Pure, straightforward violence.

"He put it back into the boxing," a friend at the gym said. She was referring to revenge; Ortiz had headbutted Floyd's chin seconds earlier, an illegal move that only cost him a point, but could have slowed his opponent. Dirty fighting. Floyd took the fight back into the ring by waiting for the signal but not for his opponent. Bam. BAM.

That same night at the gym, we ran through stations with partners. I saw that one of the men on mitts was someone I worked with before, who stops by from another gym to help out.

I didn't like this guy.

The person with the mitts calls the shots, holds the power. This man was aggressive with me, probably due to inexperience. I learned a lot from him, but not in a way I prefer. He'd lunge at me. Run at me. Call out a couple of punches, which I'd execute, and then suddenly shove me around the ring with his body.

Apparently I was supposed to fall into a pseudo-sparring mode--I think--but no one told me that. I thought I was hitting mitts. I threw out my right elbow a little, something I never do.

(Fortunately he ended the round by having me punch him in the face multiple times. He was demonstrating how to catch a punch, whereas I was appreciating the opportunity with full-on violence.)

Power: he held all of it.

I told my partner and she took him for me, and I worked with another guy. My friend and I are going to spar soon. She has 40 pounds on me and seven years, but I'm in better shape than she is. The pounds don't worry me, because I trust her. She'll give me as good of a fight as I want, but she won't be looking to hurt me. It's going to be a lot of fun.

It got me thinking back to Floyd. Separate out the boxer from the man, and you may just be on his side. The man used his power appropriately, cunningly, within the rules, something not everyone knows how to do.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 4, 2011 at 9:59 AM

    Thanks, I'd rather read this than a sports page article about the match.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lisa Creech BledsoeOctober 4, 2011 at 12:24 PM

    I thought that whole mess was... a mess. The ref never said to box again! He was looking at the judges, waiting for their signal, then he would say "Box!" and all would proceed.

    I can't see why Floyd got the decision. What a screw-up.

    I'm in a "USE YOUR WORDS" phase at my gym.

    I got killed last week by a volunteer coach (long story), and yesterday in the ring I was damned and determined to speak out or roll out when I'm not getting what I need to train effectively.

    Good for you for ditching the mitt guy (we get into some pseudo-sparring while working mitts too, it doesn't bother me, but I'm used to it).

    This is YOUR training. YOU are the one who gets in the ring when it comes to a fight. GET WHAT YOU NEED, girlfriend. I'm doing the same. (It's hard, sometimes, though, isn't it?)

    <3

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amy PhillipsOctober 4, 2011 at 1:20 PM

    That's what I thought, too (regarding the fight), but in the clip you can see the guy move his hands together. Seems to me that was the signal? But I'm not coming to blows over this one--I only know so much about it. Live, though, it looked like a brawl.

    I'd be okay with the pseudo sparring if he would have told/asked me! How would I know what to do otherwise? Reflexes have not been trained yet in the area of big men coming at me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lisa Creech BledsoeOctober 4, 2011 at 3:48 PM

    The truth is that sometimes we don't know what to ask.

    That's what happened to me last week -- the coach kept yelling at me for doing something wrong, but he had never told me that he wanted (only) continual one-twos on the angle bag.

    In my confusion, I finally started doing continual one-twos on EVERY bag in the circuit and thus got yelled at even more.

    He never did explain, and I only learned what he wanted as I was trying to recover, after, in the gym's bathroom, when someone explained that that was what they'd done in an earlier training session (which I wasn't at).

    Annoying as hell.

    And that was a weak-ass ref sign, if it was a signal to begin. I don't see it.

    But I'm probably just pissed about everything :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Amy PhillipsOctober 4, 2011 at 9:30 PM

    I think boxing gyms have an unusual, accepted way of going about training which just wouldn't fly anywhere else. Everything you do is judged minutely. Throw your right hand a zillion times, but still there will be someone across the room telling you you telegraphed it. And you probably did--my point is that nowhere else in life do you walk around and have somebody critiquing your every move without it becoming obnoxious. I mean, I try that with my husband, but it only lasts so long before he hits the bottle.

    So there's just the yelling, like you got. But if there's too much of that, I'd be doing something about it, if I were you. You have the right to be PO'ed right about now.

    ReplyDelete

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