Why I Quit Boxing

"In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved."- Joyce Carol Oates "To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other"- Jack Handy "There is no sport like boxing, and there are no athletes like fighters."- Jim Lampley "My toughest fight was with my first wife."- Muhammad Ali Writing this evokes a lot of emotions for me. I am writing this largely for my own benefit, to help clarify my own thoughts and to share them with others. I'm not looking for advice, so if you give it, just know that I have my mind made up as to what all this means to me. As I recall, I started training for boxing in 2001, a little after the Pensacola Fair that comes to town every October. I had seen my uncle there, with some tight cowboy jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. He was there to see a rodeo. He climbed the rock-climbing wall like a spider at 44 years of age that night. Considering how I'd failed so thoroughly as a young person, it was pretty impressive. He doesn't exactly inspire fear from the looks of him, but he'd had over 300 fights around the world as an amateur boxer, losing only 9. At some points in his career he was rated number one in the country. If you know anything about my family, then it would be easy to understand why I saw my uncle as someone worthy of respect. His family was dirt poor as a kid. He would hitchhike barefoot to get to his fights, weighing less than 100 lbs at the age of 15 and having very little to eat. After having fought myself, I can't imagine what it would be like to fight under those conditions. But he did, and somehow did so at the highest level. He fought his way out of his situation and became very successful as his brothers descended into alcoholism, depression, and severe drug abuse. Back to the fair. At that time, I just knew vaguely in the back of my data-bank that my uncle had been a pretty good boxer. I had been planning on telling him I wanted to be a boxer (as if I could possibly understand how grueling and frightening it would be). At the time I was playing high school football, but was not getting any playing time. It was becoming a source of frustration for me. As far as I could figure, there were no benches in boxing. As we were sitting at the rodeo, I told him about my desire to be a boxer. He looked at me a little funny and questioned me about it. I reaffirmed to him that I wanted to try it. Then he put his index finger on my chest, and when I looked down he zipped it up my face and said, "You're too slow to box." The first boxing workout was one of the most exhausting things I had ever experienced, even though I had played sports all my life. After laboring through what they called their 'warmup' I left in pain feeling totally spent. So much for thinking I had been through the worst with football camps. And I did what some people thought I couldn't or wouldn't. I kept coming back. Over the weeks and months I became stronger physically. I began to be able to routinely do the workouts and exert myself at a high level. The first sparring sessions were sobering, fear-inducing affairs. It could be likened to a mental hell. The guys I sparred with moved their arms and feet in ways I didn't fully believe were possible for me. If a sentence could sum up the emotions I felt as my headgear was being strapped on and the vaseline was being applied to my face, it might be stated like this: "What the f*** am I doing here?" Helplessly I would stand in there as their gloved-fists rattled off my head in intricate combinations. Slowly, very slowly, things would click. I began to have some small victories. I accidentally knocked a sparring partner down with a hard right hand. A former juvenile delinquent was forced to quit after I blackened his eye and exhausted him with pure effort. A perfectly placed right hand counter shot delivered another former football player on his back with a bloody nose. I won my first fight, although was so exhausted afterwards I could barely hold a coke can in my hand. The only feeling I had afterwards was the relief to be done. The rest of the night I was shaking from the adrenaline and drama of the situation, even hours later as our amateur team ate together to celebrate. I was still pretty awful compared to most boxers for the first couple years. Then I discovered how to throw combinations. I began to understand some of the nuances of the sport. I began to let go of some of the fear the kept me from being able to maintain composure and stamina when I was under attack. Rather than getting exhausted so quickly I started to have the presence of mind to block punches with calmness. The anxiety of the fight was leaving to some degree (it never fully leaves). But these triumphs in training did not overcome the fact that by my senior year in high school, I was 1-3, having lost three fights in a row. Somehow, the skills were not transferring during actual fights. I was upset about this, and had made a goal to not stop boxing until I knew I was the best that I could be. Then I went to FSU. People from different FSU ministries began to approach me. I went to a retreat with BCM, and from Jan 05 until Jan 06, I wasn't fighting and was wondering what God must think about the sport. I was not a committed believer, but somehow felt that if God existed he must have something to say about the sport. The moral questions involved were pressing me even as I started college. I prayed about the issue and asked a pastor what he thought, and really got nothing conclusive in response. The feeling that I was quitting prematurely with a losing record began to eat at me again. I just thought I was not meant to be a 1-3 fighter. Boxing is an honest sport in a sense, a sport that reveals truths about you and about your opponent. There may be teammates to hide behind in other sports. Other sports are set up in ways that allow people to hide their weaknesses and cowardice. That's why they are called games. You can play tennis. You can play basketball. You can even play football. You can't play boxing. You can't hide in a ring. If you are a liar in any way, you will get found out in a boxing ring. My long layoff before the spring of 06 resulted in me being out of shape not committed to fighting again. After doing some light training in early March, I weighed 154 pounds. I was in no way ready to fight. But I went home from spring break and visited my old boxing gym every day for a week. I was asked to spar with a Mexican fighter named Jorge. He was a young guy with 35 fights, and he was a lie-detector. If you had a fault in you, or a lie in you, he would find it out. Somehow, I was able to hold my own with him. I blocked some of his best shots and stood toe-to-toe with him and maintained a decent level of composure. Then I was told there was a fight a week later. I couldn't believe I was out of shape that badly and was somehow doing remotely well with their best fighters. I decided I would go back to Tallahassee and train as hard as I could on my own for that last week leading up to the fight, and then come back to Ft. Walton and fight if I felt good enough. Several days before the fight, I decided I was going to do it. I was weighing 152 lbs, and was more determined to win than I had ever been for any other fight. I hadn't won a fight in 4 years. For whatever reason, I had become determined to win, even though the odds were stoutly against me. On 2 and a half weeks of training, I came in overweight and didn't even care. I just knew I was out of shape and I was going to win anyway. It was one of the hardest fights I remember. But I won by using every last bit of energy I had, coming forward the whole time and answering my opponent with punches every time he tried to be my lie-detector. That set up a 'comeback'. I fought 3 more times that year, making it the busiest year I had in boxing. I won all 3 of those fights, even getting the most outstanding boxer award at one fight. Then I had a bit of a slump and lost 3 fights in a row, one of which was a pretty brutal war in which I had a flu but fought as hard as I could anyway, losing a decision to a guy I would start to become friends with. We fought again, and I lost again in another close fight between to guys who respected each other as worthy opponents. I was, however, becoming more and more serious about Jesus.The questions of course began to resurface. Is this the right thing? Would I really enjoy winning if it meant I had to knock someone out? I knew I was not going to be a career boxer now. I just saw that as impossible to do with the time it would consume, and trying be in Jesus' corner at the same time. I had my most recent fight in April of 2008, a fight that would be my last. I was 5-6 before the fight and just wanted to go out with something other than a losing record. I couldn't let it stand in the record books that I was a loser. I told God I was pretty sure I would never fight again if I won the fight. If I lost however, I knew it would be hard to quit. I didn't ask for a win. Somehow that seemed wrong to me. But I just let him know my feelings about the fight, and hoped for the best.