In This Corner… You
The waiting is over.
For three and a half long hours you had to sit and watch as eight undercard fighters camped out in the dressing room with you have had their hands taped, hit pads with their trainers, and marched into the ring.
Finally, it’s your turn. Yours is the first fight of the main event. Casper tapes your hands. He does a thorough professional job. Without the tape, your knuckles will crush under the force of your punches… you hit that hard.
The arena is close and hot.
The smoke, the lights, the twenty foot high TV screens, the cage, and the crowd close in on you, suck the air out of your lungs, give you tunnel vision.
Only the men accustomed to this hold their focus. You and some of the others with few fights under your belts struggle to block it all out.
Strip off your T-shirt. Strip off your sweats. Show your mouthguard, tap your cup.
Officials grease your brows and cheeks with Vaseline to help avoid cuts, and check your body for extra grease that shouldn’t be there, grease that might stop your opponent from getting a proper hold of you.
Your opponent is waiting for you. Run up the stairs.
Hide your fear with aggression, quell the rising puke in your belly with bravado.
Let the horn release you.
Take the center.
Find your distance, find his trigger. Throw.
Throw and connect. Feel it but don’t feel it. He’s fast, good instincts.
He takes your shot… and starts throwing back.
Feeling out, countering your jab, your right hand lead.
You chase… and take a knee for your impatience. You take the knee, it takes your breath.
He sees you step back, he presses. Out of nowhere the right hand snaps your jaw left to right and down, the force of it torques your neck, splits the skin inside your mouth. You feel it but don’t feel it.
The left hook comes, opens up your brow, you can’t see that either, and then the right, the left again and another right to square you up for the killing blow.
The knee comes like a wrecking ball into the the tip of your sternum, forces the ribcage into the lungs, forces the air out. The internal muscles lock, protecting the heart, immobilizing the torso.
You cannot breathe.
A left hook snaps you around as you fall.
There are blank spaces. People will tell you that your body was convulsing. Later you will know that your organs were trying to reboot.
Your lungs were sending messages to your CNS; let go, we need to breathe.
It is over. It is over.
You cannot believe this, even as they raise his arm.
It is impossible that after all you went through just to get into this ring… that the outcome could be this.
But you know it’s true and you immediately think of a dozen things you could have done differently.
You are mad at yourself.
You feel guilty because you are relieved it’s over.
You feel like a shmuck for disappointing your family and friends, when all they care about is that you are okay.
But you cannot hear this.
You cannot hear this.
You cannot forgive yourself.
Not yet.
This is penance.
This is your doing.
You are responsible.
You live through it.
You live with it.
Tomorrow is another chance to stand tall.
But…
Tomorrow hits harder than today.
