Jab, Cross, Hook.

There's no more to boxing than meets the eye. In any case, what meets the eye in boxing puffs your eyelids shut.

Photo by Nemesia Production on Unsplash

I started boxing.

I learned about this boxing club by inquiring about an event advertised on a billboard that I missed attending. I walked into the gym one day and met two guys, Izzy and Shedrack. Shedrack had puffy eyes. (Shedrack participated in the event above. He won his fight) There were posters of boxers on the walls all around the gym and mirrors on the parts of the walls not covered with posters. The boxing ring was dismantled and stacked against the far wall because it had just returned from the competition, which gave Shedrack his distinctive facelift. I made light talk with them, took Coach's number from Izzy, and called him. It was a pretty straightforward process. Here's the membership form and the fee; affix a passport photo and keep a copy of the filled form. Voila, your boy is a boxer.

But not so fast. I would not start exchanging blows yet. That would come later. Coach Blaise put me on a fitness regimen for conditioning. I had to run: up steps, short sprints, long jogs. I had to skip rope and learn a few drills. The running bit was pretty easy for me. Once upon a time, I used to do 10k runs up to three times a week. I generally do not run those long distances now.

The skipping part was sketchy at first. I swung my arms as if trying to somersault, swinging the rope overhead and vaulting over the rope as it came underfoot. I got curious glances until someone stepped up to say to me, No, man. You keep going like this, and you’ll gas out quick. A true boxer skipping conserves energy and is almost like a dance. Put your elbows close to your sides, only rotate your wrists to swing the rope, and lift yourself just enough to clear the ground for the rope to pass. Is this how you will skip for twenty minutes? Twenty minutes? I was already huffing like a smith’s bellow stoking the kiln.

Boxing is all about your legs, Izzy said to me. They determine your foundation, and he was right. I began with two left legs. Now and then, one of the left legs is neutral, and occasionally it gets things right. We'll make whatever improvements we can. I'd have been well served in boxing if I learned to dance. The deft foot movements required to be light on your feet come naturally to dancers and athletes. Perhaps I could improve my dancing when I become passably good at this: two birds, one stone type shit.

Why boxing? Martial arts was on my mind, and boxing was the one that made itself available. Now, as to the martial arts question, I like its immediacy. When I used to run, the distances stretched out, and nothing of consequence happened between my starting place and my ending point. (Except for one time in 2019, when I used to start running before dawn, I got cornered by four guys who took my phone and shoes, and I trod home in stockinged feet). Your feet ate the distance, plodding meter by plodding meter, and your mind was free to wander. There were no urgent questions. You set out, stoked your lungs, and set your legs afire for an hour. You figure it would be a success if you gained a few minutes on the last outing or added a record of 300 meters. So dull.

In boxing, there is a compression of space and time. Everything of consequence happened in a 20-foot square ring in about 3 minutes, and much of consequence happens. There is no spare time for ruminating, for introspection, for intellection. It’s all impulse and instinct and quick nerves. The question is simple and will be put to you directly. You want to be punched in the face or not? You cannot abstract away a left hook to the liver. You must contend with it now. You must answer with the air, your glove, or your face. You catch a bop in the nose and bleed. You catch a glove in the head, and NEPA offs your light. There, direct.

When I got in, I believed I would punch bags within the day, boxers within the week, punch my weight, and reasonably hold my own against any opponent in about a month or two. This, more or less, I learned later, is the expectation of everyone who signs up for boxing. Deep programming in every man makes him confident in his ability to fight anyone simply because he is a man. How hard can it be? You wind up your dominant arm, hold them at bay with the other, and reach back as far as you can cock your arm as if you were catching lightning with which to mow down an elephant. Then you throw the fist with such destructive force that if an elephant were in front of you, the impact just might floor that towering beast. The thing is that before you finish the wind-up, your career would end so quickly that you wouldn’t know what hit you.

After about a week or two of running around, I began to think I had signed up for track, and Coach assigned Danny to show me some basic footwork drills. Put your hands up, he said, not like that. Put your elbows into your ribs, your fists in front of your face, a foot in front, and the other behind like so, with your chin tucked in. Bend at the knees—no, don’t squat. Alright, now move like so, one two, one two. I thought I looked like a mantis in repose, but I probably looked worse. A mantis has a self-possessed dignity I was sure I lacked. After a few tottering steps, Danny came to ask me what hand I ate with. My right, I answered. Then why are you in a southpaw stance; you are orthodox. It turned out that I was following some YouTube boxing tutorials without understanding them.

James gave me a few defensive drills with two rigid plastic pipes collared with foam to simulate an attacker's arms. I was supposed to block, slip, or roll under any strike. Or get whacked. My ears were whacked red by half of the strikes I was too clumsy to evade. If my life were a movie, that part would be a Jackie Chan training montage.

But enough about me. You begin new things and must resist talking about yourself in them. There’s no you in it yet. Only a figment of you in your imagination of it. It is a time when you have to soak it up with your skin. Your head gets in the way of it. Your head watches your body and tangles up your feet. But you can observe others and talk about them. Or talk about what happens around you.

The first day I remember in the gym. Here hung a punching bag from a crossbar chock into the wall and borne up by two upright poles. A boxer who had been jogging outside came in, bandaged his hands, and slipped on gloves. He began to bother the bag, dealing driving blows that jarred the bar overhead and swung the bag this way and that. The slap of leather glove against leather bag was loud and harsh in the quiet gym. He followed the bag up, not giving any quarter. I later come to know him as Ice Cream Man. He's the real deal.

Not long after that, another guy stepped in. I later came to know him as Earth Champ, and you don't want to mess with him, either. He, too, slipped on his gloves and, with Ice Cream Man, took the bag to task. The chain on which the bag was mounted jangled as the bag swung wildly under the blows of one party or the other of the tag team. They laid into the bag so sorely, dealing jabs and crosses and hooks, that the metal bar bearing the bag snapped off close to its anchor in the wall. The bag had to be gently let down and laid to rest in a corner, slumped and looking sad. While Ice Cream Man and Earth Champ were battering the bag, Izzy appeared and repeatedly tapped a double-ended bag. It was attached so that as one punches it, it leaps back and forth like a bob plucked along a stretched string, and you slip aside as it comes. Izzy's light work, flicking and slipping away from the speed bag, sharply contrasted with Earth Champ and Ice Cream Man's drubbing of the heavy bag.

With the bag disposed of, Earth Champ and Ice-cream Man had worked up enough sweat to go at it in the ring. That was my first time watching the guys spar live, and it is a pity because those were such excellent fighters that I wish I had known a bit better about boxing to have enjoyed their sparring or remembered the details. I witnessed this in the state that Robert Frost would call “sunset raving,” the crude appreciation of the one with no cultured eye, only knowing he was watching something beyond his typical experience.

In light sparring sessions, both boxers know to pull their punches. But as the fight goes on, sometimes the banked aggression seeps out. A boxer might accidentally land a liver shot that touches his opponent sorely. The opponent escalates to harder punches, and so on they go until they are only just holding back, and hooks are jarring ribs and crosses are rocking heads, and they are clinching and breathing heavily. It is called entering “Beast Mode", and those standing around the ring would call out “Control” to rein passions back in. I am unsure if Earth Champ vs Ice Cream Man entered beast mode that day. They might not have, but my untrained eye saw a spectacle that filled my eyes.

These are the sort of romantic impressions that enchant the noob into getting involved in an activity whose long and short is, in cold blood, to throw and catch hands until one person cries, “Enough!” Or is knocked out.

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Not much happens in this essay, for a period where it should narrate more. If subsequent essays on my pugilistic career are warranted, they might have more exciting stuff. You can also catch our gym highlights here on TikTok.