Ringside fun for everyone, just a few miles from UD‘s house!
******
They’re dropping like flies! Get to a ring while they’re hot. I mean cold.
Ringside fun for everyone, just a few miles from UD‘s house!
******
They’re dropping like flies! Get to a ring while they’re hot. I mean cold.
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July 30th, 2019 at 2:43PM
When I was 13, my dad signed me up for a Golden Gloves league. For most of the summer, we hit heavy bags, learned to use the speed bag, footwork drills, conditioning, all of it. But no one can claim to be a boxer if they don’t spar. So, after the boilerplate was done, I had to get into the ring with a kid my age and approximate size.
Keep in mind we had head gear, big gloves, and the trainers told my opponent to go easy with me. He had been at the sport for a few years, to my couple months. For every punch I got in, he hit me with three. Nothing too hard, enough to snap my head back, but no blood, no broken noses. After three rounds, it was done and I felt okay, though my cheek stung.
My cousin came to pick me up. I always greeted her with “Anna Banana.” As I got into the car and went to say her favorite nickname, I couldn’t remember. It took her to remind me what it was. With nothing more than a few stiff jabs, and a few glancing blows off the headgear, I couldn’t remember my favorite cousin’s nickname. She told my mom, who put an end to all that. You can imagine the sustained damage of years of that pounding….
July 30th, 2019 at 6:44PM
charlie: This is, first of all, really nicely written — beginning of a great short story.
I seem to recall you did play some reasonably serious sports in hs or college? Less head bashing, I assume…
July 30th, 2019 at 8:14PM
UD, yes, you’re right, I did participate in sports year round. Football, basketball, and track. My dad was All City baseball at Roosevelt HS in Boyle Heights, CA, and went on to play for UCLA. My maternal uncles were footbal and baseball players at Saint Ignatius High in San Francisco. Uncle Herman played for the Chicago Cubs minor league team located on Catalina Island, CA. I was going to be an athlete, or it was going to be a wee bit chilly during the holidays.
For my dad and uncle’s generation, boxing was a major pastime. It wasn’t unusual for boys of that era to participate in that sport. My father/uncles believed, with good reason, that if you could deal with what boxing demanded, every other sport would be far easier. They were right, but mom didn’t care. It was hard enough for her with all the contusions, sprains, and dislocations that I was already enduring, she wasn’t going to deal with a slightly punchy teenager, as well. And she was NOT happy that college recruiters were angling for me to continue football into college. God bless her, she couldn’t care less about sports, and as it worked out, because of a, ahh, disagreement with a teacher my senior year of high school, all athletic scholarship offers were rescinded. So, I went to University of San Francisco and was a walk on basketball player for a year. Mom always knew best…