Fight Night

As loud as the music is, you’d think you’d hear it. You don’t. Not inside. You’re only peripherally aware of the crowd cheering. It’s just you and the other guy. In my case, the other guy is a lurching Puerto Rican. I have about two inches on him. Every bit of my attention is riveted to his sweaty, bobbing face. Why is he here? Probably pride and/or alcohol, the Gemini twins of Questionable Guy Decisions.

It doesn’t matter.

I now have one objective: To beat the living crap out of another human being.

Outside the ring, I was a writer, but not now. Here there is no objectifying. No running narrative. I am not a writer. I’m his Ike and he’s my Tina. I’m Mohammed Ali.

I am Man.

Our scene is a nightclub in Orlando, at an event known as Fight Night. After signing a waiver longer than an Oscar acceptance speech, guys (and a few brave girls) don headgear, mouthpieces, and gloves and ready themselves to pound, and be pounded by, a total stranger. Opponents are matched to within five pounds of their weight so as to avoid a Tyson-like, have-to-watch-it-in-slow-motion-to-see-it K-O.

The club videotapes all the matches. Whether for entertainment value or insurance purposes, I don’t know. The winner gets a trophy with a little gold-tone Boxer Man on top and a Zapruder-quality videotape of their victory. The loser can buy a copy for ten bucks, though I can’t imagine why they would want to.

The big event of the night is something called Thunderdome. You know, “two men enter, one man leaves.” The winner leaves with three hundred bucks, the loser a C note. Depending on the number of teeth lost, it’s not a bad take.

I’m sitting with my Heineken-killing buddy, watching this scene, this Van Damme alternate universe, and I’m thinking that besides the obvious need to procreate and continue the species, God probably created woman just so we wouldn’t kill ourselves off.

Take a look at our collective family tree. The first murder occurred in our second generation. Think about it. The dawn of man, Adam and Eve are roaming around, looking for a nice place to settle down, close to work, good schools, and before you can say “Hey Abel, you want a piece of this?” we have mankind’s first homicide.

The invention of the chalk outline preceded the discovery of fire. Violence isn’t our tendency, it’s our heritage.

At 1 am, they call my name.

By now, the stale, smoke-filled atmosphere here has been infused with a greasy, sweaty, musky-smell-of-fear, test-of-manhood funk.

As they strap my gloves on, I think about Ernest Hemingway, another pugilist writer. I tell myself I’m following in a great tradition. Then again, Ernest Hemingway killed himself. It occurs to me I could possibly emulate Papa in two ways tonight with one event.

It’s now a minute twenty into the first three-minute round. I just escaped from the corner. The guy drunkenly rushed me, hailing down a flurry of blows to the side of my head. Nothing solid connected. I’m trying to be smart, land good punches to his face. Left jab (pow), cover. Left jab, right hook, right hook, (pow pow pow) cover.

I think about little league. I had a tendency to step out of the batter’s box right as the ball crossed the plate. (Wwwfft. Strike!) Afraid I’d get hit I guess, I don’t know. The middle school chapters of my memory are a little dusty, but I would imagine Dad wasn’t
thrilled that the only time his son got on base was when the coach secretly asked him to step into the path of the ball and take one for the team (which he did).

And if it’s just a game like everyone says, why am I still thinking about it ten years later?

I’m wondering: if I win, would this make up for those disappointing adolescent episodes of cowardice?

Wwwfft. Left jab (pow).

What if I lose? Is true victory the willingness to risk defeat, or is that just something the losers tell themselves?

Wwwfft. Strike! Uppercut. Pow!
Wwwfft. Strike! Right jab. Pow!
Wwwfft. Strike! Roundhouse. POW!

Suddenly, I look up. His nose is bleeding. A lot. An odd, crimson pyramid flowing down to his chin. I am happy.

But I can’t revel in the moment for long, because now he’s pissed, so we dance and weave and punch and cover some more.

I’m spent. It’s just round one, but our bodies are at the stage where, in a normal bout, the boxers hold each other to rest in an armistice of exhaustion. Before the bell, I did a little shadowboxing dance to pump up the crowd. I’m kicking myself now for wasting that precious energy.

There’s ten seconds left. My heart is pumping lactic acid through my veins. One thought: Don’t-want-to-go-more-rounds-so-tired-so-tired-so-tired…

The guy’s now holding the back of my head down. Five seconds left. Four, three…Two things then happened simultaneously: One, I got free. Two, he turned away for a split second. If you look at the videotape (and I have many times) I was actually airborne when I whipped around and connected with the side of his face. His head swiveled and snapped back like one of those bouncy head dolls and in slow motion, he fell to the mat. No drama, no opera, just a simple lesson in physics.

But this is not the highlight of the night. Nor is it the fact that he didn’t get up for five minutes. The real trophy for me isn’t the one I had to retrieve from the ring because the ref was still tending to the guy. The true highlight came thirty minutes later, eating my Chili Mac Supreme at Steak’n’Shake. I look down and notice a wet spot on my shirt. Then another. I survey my henley and find I have the guy’s blood all over me. And my friend and I laugh. At 3:30 in the morning, in our booth at Steak’n’Shake, we laugh at my unlikely victory and I bask in the glory of the harsh florescent lights, marveling at my trophy, a heather gray Banana Republic shirt that I will never get to wear again.

I recounted the story to my girlfriend. I recounted the story to my circle of friends. I recounted the story to any stranger who would listen to it.

Now six days after the fight, two things are certain: One, even Extra-Strength Tide won’t get bloodstains out. And two, I am never going to box again. Anecdotes like this are as rare as…well, as rare as a nearsighted white guy walking away the winner from a street fight.

Why mess with that?

And at Sunday dinner, I recounted the story to my parents. Mom, of course, playing up her shocked horror. Dad, scoring a full blown ten on the crinkly-eyed smile scale. And I don’t know, won’t ever know, if it made up for anything, or if there was anything to even make up for. But I still brought the trophy.

Just in case.