The Roar
The Roar

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How I learned to embrace boxing, the thinking man's sport

Toby Roberts new author
Roar Rookie
22nd June, 2018
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Toby Roberts new author
Roar Rookie
22nd June, 2018
1

By midlife my hamstrings were tearing so easily I had to find a new way to exercise; something that didn’t involve running.

I decided to take up boxing with two friends at my local PCYC. The more analytical among you have probably spotted the weakness in my decision to avoid further injury by taking up fighting. But logical incoherence is no bar to boxing.

In fact one of the main justifications for the club was shaky. The art of combat was thought to build confidence in young men; the kind of confidence that can only come from propelling your opponent’s brain into the wall of their skull.

Aside from the argument that confidence might be built by learning to do other thing (like sums, for instance), it occurred to me that if I’d possessed boxing confidence as a kid, I probably wouldn’t have run away from all the people who wanted to punch me at school.

Instead, I would have tried fighting and most likely experienced the sharp loss of confidence that comes from having all your teeth punched out. But that moment was now waiting for me in the ring.

The walk into the training area was intimating. The corridor led passed the weights room where tattooed men screamed as they hefted enormous lumps of metal.

The boxing room was even worse. Footballers and semi-professional fighters tried to spook one another by punching the heavy bags so hard that the leather lumps rattled on their anchors.

The sweat of a dozen men settled on me as I entered, so thick that it could be breathed solidly into the mouth. The windows were closed even in Summer to help us ‘sweat it out’.

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I was tempted to point out that the body’s intent behind sweating was frustrated without the air flow needed to cause evaporation. But I thought better of it when I saw our trainer, Angelo.

Who was I to question the sweet science of boxing, refined down the ages by generations of brain injured fighters?

Matt Davoren throws a punch.

(Credit: Matt Davoren’s Instagram @mattdav_boxing)

Angelo was a former Pan-Pacific champion from the Philippines. Judging from some of the posters on the wall, his fighting weight had been somewhere between a jockey and lingerie model, but freed from the constraints of the weigh-in, he now looked like a medicine ball.

“You guys need the big gloves if you want to spar” he cautioned. He had a gentle disposition and a high sunny voice which was difficult to reconcile with his clear record of violence.

We took the big gloves from the cupboard and immediately regretted it. Decades of previous wearers had left their sweat for each subsequent user to augment.

On the upside, it suggested the real possibility that if you happened to miss your opponent, you might still be able to overcome him by wafting a glove under his nose.

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Seeing our revulsion, Angelo decided to start us on skipping instead. I was quickly identified as a remedial skipper by the way I managed to hog-tie my legs, threatening to bring myself to the canvass without a punch.

Never able to flip the rope easily under my feet, let alone cross my hands or alternate between feet, I tried jumping very high to clear my feet, which only brought the rope in contact with my head.

Eventually I pioneered a new technique that involved a kind of hurdling on the spot, which embarrassed everyone so much I was excused from skipping duties. My drills with Angelo were more successful and I gradually evolved from bag and pad work, to sparring.

Angelo worked me through a series of linked moves. “Head down” he shouted, punching mine upwards. “Watch this side” he said, punching the eye I needed to do that. “Listen” he shouted his instructions again after punching me in the ear hole. An older instructor commiserated with me afterwards.

“Boxing is hard. It’s a thinking sport”, he said, tapping his head, oblivious to the irony that his fellow-trainer had just been punching mine.

I described a session of punishment like this to my friends at a barbeque.

“Sometimes I feel a bit stupid, paying a man to punch me in the face”, I said.

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“I’ll do it for you” said my friend Peter. “Don’t give your money to a stranger.”

“I’ll do it for free” said William.

But I persevered and eventually became quite good. I felt fit and strong after a few years. But the unsettling truth was that a certain sadism had blossomed in my friends and me. We laughed and congratulated one another when someone managed to ‘blood’ a nose or punch the air from a lung. Bonding over these things, we’d learnt to embrace the thinking man’s sport.

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