Boxe Anglaise

This is the amateur boxing match I had on Saturday, April 19th 2008 in Springfield, VT. Bob Kelly helped me by converting the recording from VHS to WMV. I'm in the red corner, wearing American flag shorts. During the National Writing Project's Summer Institute in Vermont I wrote about the fight. Here it is:

Three Rounds
Shawn P. Kelly

Fighting In the White Spaces

“Do you know who you’re fighting?”
“No.”
“What do you weigh?”
“137”
“And you’re from…”
“Burlington.”
“Yea. You’re fighting my guy. He’s a good kid. He’s right over here. So, you orthodox or..?”
“Huh? Oh… Southpaw. Yea. And him?”

“I’ll tell you when there’re only ten seconds left in the round. I’ll yell: ten seconds. And when I do that…”
“Give him everything.”
“Yep, you use all you got. Cause sometimes that’s when you win the round. It’s the last thing the judges see. And you can count – I got it down – you can watch the tape. After you hear me yell on that tape, you start counting. It’s exactly ten seconds.”

“All right. What the hell? What are you doing? I can’t help you win if you don’t keep your hands up. When you go back out there, what are you gonna do?”
“Keep my hands up.”

“Good. You won that round. You know why?”
“I kept my hands up.”
“Yep. Now you need to keep doing what you did and win the next round. This is it. Keep circling him, working your jab. Keep your hands up.”

“You did good.”
“Sorry I got blood on the shirt and shorts.”
“No. Don’t worry about that stuff.”
“I heard you yell ‘ten seconds’.”
“In that last round I yelled ‘ten seconds’ when there were thirty seconds left. You needed those points. And you did good. You worked him.”

“Hey man. Good fight. You kept going. Hitting hard.”
“I thought I had you in the first. Thought you were gonna go down.”
“I thought I was gonna go down too.”

“You should clean up your nose. Ice it.”
“I don’t think it’s broken.”
“No. But it’ll be pretty swollen. You can check again with the doctor.”
“Did you see his eye?”
“Yea. It’s all dark and swollen underneath.”

Animal Memory

Before the fight, his coach pointed out my facial hair. Suggested I shave. His fighter had. But the match started between a clean-shaven man with long hair and a bearded man with shorter hair.
The audience sat on hardwood bleachers. The ring stood in the middle of a high school gymnasium, at center court.

I circled clockwise in the first round. Then he had me against the ropes. He swung again and again for a knockout, stepping into his punches.
I didn’t go down. He stopped moving his feet as quickly.
During his attack in the first, the audience crackled with excitement. But for most of the fight they sounded like static.

Jabs had loosened his hair from his headgear. Each shot made a shoulder-length, sweaty, dirty blonde splash. I knocked him down, fast, but the referee called it a push, shaking his head “no.”

His gloves in flashes, or held tight against his cheeks. Then my blood. At first it was a few splotches. With each punch, more red pooled on his blue glove. But he no longer stepped in. He leaned now.
I started punches with a long jab. Then volleyed fists from each side, like the ball in a tennis match. The torso twisting and lunging.

He came in, clinching after a shot caught him in the head.
We stood close in the end, throwing all weight into looping punches. Analog metronomes reaching back and swinging into each other.

Recording

Not quite a tension. Just a thick expectation that made me feel empty and heavy at once. The ring looked awkward, floating so high at midcourt. But so did I, gangily weighing in at 137 pounds on a 6-foot frame.

I think his coach told him to test me right away. See if he could knock me out. Snap that stick of a man. The solid shots disorient more than they hurt. I started to turn my back during the initial flurry. It’s something I’d done in sparring at first – turn my back – and it’s not only bad boxing, I didn’t like what it implied about my instincts. My heart.

When my nose started bleeding, it felt heavy. Like someone was pinching it with their fist and pulling down. But the videotape doesn’t show the blood. The tape disappointed me the first time I watched it. Reality is more violent. Memory more stuttering.