Last time I scrapped was the fourth grade, when Benji Leva spat on my sister at the bus stop. I pulled the bully’s raincoat over his head, kicked him in the backpack, and bolted to school as fast as I could.Would you believe I had no formal training?
That all changed when I met welterweight champ George Sylva, who taught me the ropes (and how to stay off of them). I had a few things working against me. One, I am skinny; two, I’m white; and three, my HMO is so weak that it covers only an apple a day. So it goes.
The whole gym worked out in three-minute intervals. When the round-clock buzzed, everything stopped like The Twilight Zone. It’s hard to describe the tricep pain without using the F-word. Three minutes doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you’re shadow boxing it’s like 180 seconds.
George ordered some ab drills that he had learned in the navy. Until then I had seen medicine balls but didn’t know how much I despised them. And when I absolutely, positively could not go on, he ordered ten more crunches.
“Body blows,” he said. “You’ll thank me later.”
Every time I dropped the jump rope, I had to jog a lap; and during that process, I made a discovery … You know what works just as well a jump rope? An imaginary jump rope. Same exercise-no friggen mind games.
One day George showed up with funny eyes and said, “I think you’re ready.”
Sparring, for the record, is a time for boxers to hone their technique. It may look friendly on account of the headgear, but getting punched is a lot like getting punched.
George called on 16-year-old Hugo Centeno, a junior gold medalist who was-gulp-56 and 0.
“He’s skilled enough to control his sting,” said George.
Oh. Well. That’s encouraging.
First, I hate it when ninth-graders are taller than me. Second, I was old enough to be his… spiritual advisor. Stepping into the ring, I mentioned my HMO, but Hugo didn’t get it. The round clock buzzed and George pushed me out of the nest.
I sidled up to Hugo, peeking through a gap in my gloves. Hit him?! I don’t even know him. Jab. Jab jab. Nibble jab.
George shouted from the side: “You’re trying to swim without gettin’ wet.”
Did I have Dr. Phil for a trainer? “You can’t change her feelings. That’s like trying to touch up the Mona Lisa with motor oil.”
THWACK! Hugo punched my eyeball, and I immediately recalled all jabs.
“Think of your arm as a piston,” said George. “It’s got to snap back.”
“You mean like my head?”
The second round was mostly hit and miss: Hugo hit me; I missed him. Then, at the risk of walking away like something by Picasso, I decided to throw as many punches as I could, to win by volume.
This is called “punching yourself out.” Hugo waited for my triceps to catch fire, then introduced The Counterpunch. And George was wrong: It didn’t feel like a car wreck at all; it was more like a plane crash.
In the third and final round, Hugo played the bongos on my noggin. And right there, in the midst of that flurry, something beautiful happened: I opened my eyes and breathed. In, out, Zen, out. My courage grew not with every punch I landed but with every punch I took. I finally stopped running from the bus stop.
After the fight, I drove to the park and looked at the stars. It was still light outside: The stars were in my head. And there I reflected.
Whereas I used to find boxing a silly sport-grown men fighting over a belt-I learned that most boxers don’t fight for the trophy; they fight for that look in George’s eyes, the freedom to walk the earth with nothing to prove.
I’m the newest member at Sylva’s Gym. They call me Cinderella Man because that’s how I fight-like Cinderella. And even though I take the worst of the exchanges, I’m getting better. Someday I may even fight a grownup.
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Jason Love is an award-winning humor columnist, stand-up comedian, and author of “Snapshots: The Big Picture,” available at Amazon.com. Check out more of his work at www.jasonlove.com.
