The Intimacy of Boxing

Somehow the conversation got around to boxing. We were three couples -- 60 and 70 somethings. One of the men mentioned that he had developed a friendship with a former prizefighter at their gym. He said the guy was quite personable and well-read. I tried to imagine such a man in a boxing ring.

"Did you guys ever box as a kid?" I asked. Our friend Ron said he had, as a college student in a boxing class. They matched the fighters by height, Ron said, and he was paired up for the semester with a guy exactly his height (a six-footer), but who unfortunately was 40 pounds heavier than he. Ron did not pursue the sport further after earning a passing grade in the class.

I recalled boxing as a grade schooler in CYO matches at the school I attended in Ft. Wayne, Ind. -- St. Andrew's Academy. I was a little kid but was quite tenacious and willing to take a punch to the head and keep going. I won most of my fights by running at my opponents and flailing them with punches. The momentum I got from running across the ring gave me plenty of confidence and probably intimidated my larger foes.

My dad and my Uncle Joe both had boxed a lot as kids. In fact, Uncle Joe was a professional prizefighter for a couple of years and had won a half dozen bouts but quit the sport when he was asked to throw a fight to make a path to a title fight for a guy that the handlers thought had greater potential and star quality.

As I think back to my short stint as a boxer (it ended when I was battered and bruised in a Silver Gloves match against a kid I knew and thought was a push-over), I remember that I hated and loved it at the same time. I hated it because every time I strapped on the gloves and stepped into the ring I was full of terror and felt sick. I hated it because I did not like the feeling of having my bell rung and I especially hated receiving a solid punch to the stomach. I loved it because I felt great when the cigar-puffing men surrounding the CYO basement gym cheered me on and referred to me as The Whirlwind.

I think it was good for me to have the experience of being all alone in a small, roped-off area with a mean-looking, muscular kid who wanted to pound me into submission. There is nothing like surviving that nightmare. And, as strange as it may seem, I also enjoyed the intimacy of it. I remember the first thing I would do after winning a fight was to hug the loser. And when I lost, the winner also did the same for me. There is a comaraderie in boxing that is unparalleled in any other sport. No one -- none of the screaming people at ringside, none of the girls who tried to talk us out of fighting, none of the boys who never tried the sport -- can fully understand the empathy, the connection, the respect that occurs between two boys who have just spent several minutes beating each other about the head and body with the rage of mistreated San Quentin inmates.