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FROM MY BOOK, "THE ICEMAN DIARIES":
"Sometimes sparring can get out of hand and, on occasion, I like it like that.
When I was an amateur boxer I used to spar with one of my teammates, a fellow Golden Gloves Champion, that was a particularly tough guy and every time we sparred each other he would end up taunting me, often dropping his hands and challenging me with "That's all you got?" Sometimes I would get irritated and try to tee off on him with my hardest shots but time after time it would just make him taunt me even more. It eventually got to the point where I would say to myself "Well, I guess I can't punch at all." So this one day, he starts talking his usual big stuff to me and I am hitting him harder and harder, seriously trying to hurt him. He keeps talking and challenging me and I keep hitting him harder and harder. He was one of these guys that when you hit him with a good shot he would drop his hands and say "Come on, hit me harder!" Like he liked it or something. Then all of sudden, though, seemingly out of nowhere, I landed a sharp right hand and I noticed him kind of stiffening up a little bit. It was crazy. I saw that and when it occurred to me that he was dazed I smelled blood and it was like my mind just went blank and my body took over. I started hitting him harder and harder, definitely with the baddest of intentions. I felt the punches landing solidly on his face over and over and it was instantly like I was fighting for the championship of the world. The mind is so powerful and when you take a trained fighter with a competitive nature like myself and put him in a situation like that things like that can happen. I could hear our trainer yelling "Stop! Stop!" but I was in such a frenzy, throwing punches as fast and hard as I could, that I totally ignored him. I saw that my sparring partner, my antagonist, was hurt and was beginning to fall but instead of backing away it was like something inside of me kicked into overdrive, I just couldn't stop myself, and it ended up looking very similar to the Mercer-Morrison heavyweight fight from a few years later. I didn't stop punching until he was down and apparently out and our coach was inside the ring pulling me away from him. I remember looking down at him and I would say it was a thing where the five percent of me that felt concern for him was overruled by the ninety-five percent that was still on that high of having overpowered something or someone that you saw as your opponent. In normal moments in every day life he was a good friend of mine but in those moments after he slid down to the floor he was still my enemy and I looked down at him thinking how he had just gotten his for all the trash talking he did to me and that was the way the cookie crumbled. It's like if that happened on the basketball court it would be a thing where I would (if I had any basketball skills) have just gotten done crossing over and dunking on a guy that I could never previously beat in a one-on-one and now I was enjoying the moments afterwards as I stood there in that glow of having defeated the one that always gave me trouble and trash talked me as he did it. The difference in boxing, though, is that moments like that could just as easily bring about serious injury (or worse) that you can't take back. As long as I have been boxing, especially in situations like that, it was a thing where I never really considered the fact that we could get hurt. I see guys get knocked out viciously, friends of mine, and while others near me express serious concern and fear of the worst I have always just chalked shrugged my shoulders, if I even blinked at all, and chalked it up to just being part of the game we are in. I mean, I expect these things to happen, you know? And I have hurt and been hurt enough, visibly and otherwise, to have been made to be kind of numb to it all.
Afterwards a couple guys from the gym picked him up and carried him to the bathroom where we poured cold water on his face and body to revive him completely. Now, you might think that episode would have caused a rift in our friendship but this is boxing and the gym. It was a vicious incident but, honestly, it had no ill effect on our friendship and to this day we are good friends. It was just something that happened in the gym, period. A happening accepted between two boxers that knew the potential for such an event even before the gloves were laced up.
I even joked with him about it on-line one night not that long ago. He was in the boxing on-line chat room joking about how I couldn't punch hard. I said "Oh, I can't punch huh? How about that time we sparred and I dusted you?" He was dis*****g and questioning the happenings of that day back and forth with me until I really got him.
"We would have counted you out," I told him. "But we ran out of numbers."
ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY
"Sometimes sparring can get out of hand and, on occasion, I like it like that.
When I was an amateur boxer I used to spar with one of my teammates, a fellow Golden Gloves Champion, that was a particularly tough guy and every time we sparred each other he would end up taunting me, often dropping his hands and challenging me with "That's all you got?" Sometimes I would get irritated and try to tee off on him with my hardest shots but time after time it would just make him taunt me even more. It eventually got to the point where I would say to myself "Well, I guess I can't punch at all." So this one day, he starts talking his usual big stuff to me and I am hitting him harder and harder, seriously trying to hurt him. He keeps talking and challenging me and I keep hitting him harder and harder. He was one of these guys that when you hit him with a good shot he would drop his hands and say "Come on, hit me harder!" Like he liked it or something. Then all of sudden, though, seemingly out of nowhere, I landed a sharp right hand and I noticed him kind of stiffening up a little bit. It was crazy. I saw that and when it occurred to me that he was dazed I smelled blood and it was like my mind just went blank and my body took over. I started hitting him harder and harder, definitely with the baddest of intentions. I felt the punches landing solidly on his face over and over and it was instantly like I was fighting for the championship of the world. The mind is so powerful and when you take a trained fighter with a competitive nature like myself and put him in a situation like that things like that can happen. I could hear our trainer yelling "Stop! Stop!" but I was in such a frenzy, throwing punches as fast and hard as I could, that I totally ignored him. I saw that my sparring partner, my antagonist, was hurt and was beginning to fall but instead of backing away it was like something inside of me kicked into overdrive, I just couldn't stop myself, and it ended up looking very similar to the Mercer-Morrison heavyweight fight from a few years later. I didn't stop punching until he was down and apparently out and our coach was inside the ring pulling me away from him. I remember looking down at him and I would say it was a thing where the five percent of me that felt concern for him was overruled by the ninety-five percent that was still on that high of having overpowered something or someone that you saw as your opponent. In normal moments in every day life he was a good friend of mine but in those moments after he slid down to the floor he was still my enemy and I looked down at him thinking how he had just gotten his for all the trash talking he did to me and that was the way the cookie crumbled. It's like if that happened on the basketball court it would be a thing where I would (if I had any basketball skills) have just gotten done crossing over and dunking on a guy that I could never previously beat in a one-on-one and now I was enjoying the moments afterwards as I stood there in that glow of having defeated the one that always gave me trouble and trash talked me as he did it. The difference in boxing, though, is that moments like that could just as easily bring about serious injury (or worse) that you can't take back. As long as I have been boxing, especially in situations like that, it was a thing where I never really considered the fact that we could get hurt. I see guys get knocked out viciously, friends of mine, and while others near me express serious concern and fear of the worst I have always just chalked shrugged my shoulders, if I even blinked at all, and chalked it up to just being part of the game we are in. I mean, I expect these things to happen, you know? And I have hurt and been hurt enough, visibly and otherwise, to have been made to be kind of numb to it all.
Afterwards a couple guys from the gym picked him up and carried him to the bathroom where we poured cold water on his face and body to revive him completely. Now, you might think that episode would have caused a rift in our friendship but this is boxing and the gym. It was a vicious incident but, honestly, it had no ill effect on our friendship and to this day we are good friends. It was just something that happened in the gym, period. A happening accepted between two boxers that knew the potential for such an event even before the gloves were laced up.
I even joked with him about it on-line one night not that long ago. He was in the boxing on-line chat room joking about how I couldn't punch hard. I said "Oh, I can't punch huh? How about that time we sparred and I dusted you?" He was dis*****g and questioning the happenings of that day back and forth with me until I really got him.
"We would have counted you out," I told him. "But we ran out of numbers."
ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY
LOL
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