Eddy, a professional boxer, is now
training with my wife’s trainer, Davy,
who, as I related in an earlier post,
is now my trainer because I need to
protect myself from my wife.
Eddy is about 5, 6’', 130 pounds,
and lightening fast. He hits the
bag with terrific force almost faster
than I can see–lots of combinations.
Looking at him it seems completely
daft to let professionals boxers fight one another. Eddy has
scars on his forehead from cuts.
At 32, Davy’s speech is slurred.
But Davy moves like a panther–a beautiful
relaxed lethal smoothness. You can
see why people get hooked on boxing.
There’s nothing else like it,
fortunately.
My wife has been talking to Eddy about
philosophy, in which he is interested,
so yesterday he asked me
to say something philosophical.
‘That which does not kill me makes me
stronger. Nietzsche said that.’
‘Hey, I like that!’ Davy said.
Eddy looked dubious.
‘Suppose I get run over by a truck
or something, and they glue me back
together and I live. Is that gonna
make me stronger?’
‘Nietzsche is a bit over the top, I’m afraid.’
Davy picked up the medicine ball, pointed to the sit-up mat and smiled at me:
‘Common Mr. KO, I’m gonna make you
stronger!’
Last night I dreamt that I was being corralled into a boxing match. I wasn’t much interested, as I don’t box, and thought I’m going to get clobbered. Fortunately, the dream veered off in another direction. Then, this morning, I glance at the board while eating breakfast, and read this post. I think, hmm…this is why I had the dream.
I’ve had experiences many times over the years where I dream something vivid and specific, and the next day, I see a very closely connected event. There is rarely any significance to the dream/event, but they are very specific.
Tony
I have an interesting Boxing story. Last year or perhaps the year before (I can’t think so good no more) there was this fight on HBO between two Boxers name of Diaz and Ward. Since my last name is Diaz and my roommates name is Ward we decided to capatalize on the coincidence by having a party for our mutual friends. At first it was ment to be just a low key affair, but we kept coming up with ideas. I think the first idea was that we could have our friends wager on the outcome of the fight. Not money, you understand, but weird bets that would involve acts of public humiliation and the like. Next came the idea that everyone had to dress up as if they were attending a major title fight. We had ideas for decorating the place like a ring and getting someone to MC and later DJ. Well before you knew it we actually agreed to hold a fight between my Roomate and I in our apartment. Insanity! I think we both thought we would dance around a bit, throwing soft jabs and such with these “pillow puncher” gloves I found at Kmart. Wrong. These things should be banned from the market, or at least renamed “satanic puchers of unrelenting pain and torment”. Within a few seconds of this fight I knew something was not right. I mean he hit me with a jab and it felt like what I thought a roundhouse should feel like. I jabed him back, and I could see in his eyes that he had the same shocking realization. I think we both knew that we were in way too deep, but we could not back out. Our friends were going wild, just loving how crazy this was. So we proceded to just beat up on each other until I got knocked down. It lasted three rounds and I knew enough when I hit the floor to stay down. Some of my friends still think I took a dive, mostly because I got to see them on the losing end of the humiliation bets. Anyway… it was a great party, remembered fondly by all including my roomate and I, but I will think twice before ever putting on a pair of gloves again.
Great dream, great story.
I haven’t sparred yet, but my wife
spars every week, sometimes with
Davy, sometimes with another student.
Our hands are wrapped, everybody has
mouthguards and my wife wears headgear,
also a chest protector.
The training is very good for a
musician–the sit ups, which we do
lots of (‘Make it burn!’ Davy says)
help considerably with controlling
breath. And the aerobic, and sometimes
anaerobic, intensity of punching the
heavier bags helps too. I’m nervous
about my wrists, which sometimes
trouble me playing, and I’m spending
a lot of time pretty scientifically
wrapping my wrists and hands.
The stance we train in, arms up,
in one’s ‘window’, is close enough
to playing a whistle to improve
my stamina at it–I spend lots of
hours playing on the street, you see.
Music aside, archaic
anger wells up in me as I train–
I suppose this is a good thing.
The heavy bag looks
a bit like my mother…