Bua’s feet flicker across a vulcanized floormat, body circling to the left, feinting, ducking away, back to the right. The squeak of his shoes on the rubber and his breath coming into an even rhythm. The boy’s so quick he could fight in a rainstorm and stay bone dry.
“I don’t know where Sucharit found him,” I say. “Probably on the streets. He doesn’t fight for glory. He fights for a paycheck. The boy trains hard and fights for the money because he knows, even at his age, it could all be taken away.”
The kids sips tea, wipes his neck. “I don’t fight for the money, exactly.”
“Then why?”
“I got anger.”
“At who?”
“Don’t know. Everyone. Not all the time, you know, but sometimes … it builds up. This need to hurt, even if it means getting hurt myself. And that’s okay, the way I see it, because everybody stepping into the ring knows the stakes. You accept those stakes, you accept the risk—maybe you’re going to get fed. No, it’s not the money. Fighting, it’s like, therapy.”
Fighters like him are the hardest to train. On one hand, he’s managed to inhibit his natural instinct for survival: he understands he will get hurt, bleed, and doesn’t run from it. Stifling the survival instinct—to continue fighting after being knocked down, to wipe blood out of your eyes and wade back into the fray—is a trick some fighters never master. On the other hand, his anger is dangerous: it’s useless, not to mention foolish, carrying too much fury into the ring. Successful fighters learn to see their opponent as a faceless thing whose weight roughly equals their own, something vertical that must be laid horizontal. But successful fighters respect their opponents: respect their power, their stamina, their will to win. Lack of respect leads to a cocky fighter blinking up into the ring lights as the ref counts him out.
Bua completes his drills and he and Sucharit walk over to the ring. The boy’s body is slick with clean, healthy sweat. He smiles. The bottom front teeth have been punched out.
“Your fighter’s looking good,” I tell Sucharit.
Sucharit frowns: trainers never admit the worth of their fighters, especially in their presence. “He slow,” Sucharit says. “Like he eat lead.” He slaps the boy’s toned stomach. “Hah? You eat lead, hah?”
“I thought he looked slow,” says the kid.
“When’s his next fight?”
“Two wee’,” Sucharit says to me. “Ban’kok.”
“Tell him I say he’s a weak puncher,” the kid says. “Girl arms.”
“He understands fine,” I say. “Quit making an ass.”
“Tell him I got two friends I want him to meet,” the kid goes on, grinning. He holds up his right fist: “Bread.” He holds up the left: “And Butter.”
Sucharit puts his arm around Bua’s shoulder and guides him away. “Goo’ luck training.”
“Why’d you say that?” I say after they’ve gone. “Something in the air?”
“Air’s fine.”
THE MOST WIDESPREAD MISUNDERSTANDING surrounding the death of Johnny “The Kid” Starkley is that I killed him purposefully and maliciously because he questioned my sexuality, called me faggot at the weigh-in. But it had nothing to do with vengeance: I’d been trained to fight until my opponent dropped or the bell went or the ref stepped in. The bell didn’t ring and Ruby Goldstein didn’t step in and Starkley refused to go down so I did as I’d been trained. I didn’t want to kill him. My only intent was to defeat Starkley completely, leave him lying there on the canvas. I wanted him dead to me, dead as a threat. Nietzsche wrote, Every man unfolds himself in fighting. Well, that night in Tupelo, in a ring smelling of sweat and spit and cold adrenaline, I unfolded.
My popularity skyrocketed after the fight. Everyone wanted to ink the “sanctioned murderer” to their card. But by then all the fight had drained out of me. I stared at myself in every passing mirror: nose busted so many times over it couldn’t rightly be called a nose anymore, right eyelid hanging half-masted due to nerve damage, cheeks so scarred they looked like carnival taffy. I understood the same thing could’ve happened to Starkley in a bar or back alley for no payday at all. It’s just, that way it wouldn’t have been on my conscience. I started juicing hard, haunting the Cyclone with the washups and fight bums, stripping down everything I’d built.
My second week in Bangkok I drifted into the Royal Jubilee Palace arena, drawn by crowd buzz and frantic ocarina music, to see my first Muay Thai match. I was mesmerized by the pre-fight rituals, the lean tan bodies, the thrill of men in close combat. The pureness of it all. I knew then I’d never escape. Marvin Hagler spoke for all of us when he said, If they cut my head open, they would find one big boxing glove. That’s all I am. I live it. You can’t outrun this life. Sounds weak, I know, but it’s the truth. Whether it was bred into me or whether I’d always harbored the bent has long ceased to matter.
This morning I’m watching the kid shadowbox in a wash of hot, dusty sunlight pouring through slats in the long-house roof. The kid’s a bully: in sparring sessions he’ll remind you of a vintage Foreman, shoving his partner around before tagging him with jabs, then a hook to the body, finishing with an uppercut flush on the knockout button. Shots so hard the other guy’s eyes fog despite the headgear and oversize gloves.
Problem is he can’t leave his fight in the ring. Type of alpha male who’ll walk into a bar and knock the bouncer’s teeth out to prove he’s the toughest bastard in the place. He’s got serious heart: takes sparring shots so wicked they’d cripple a bear, eats up mile after mile of road like he’s starving, punches a dent in the heavy bag. But there’s too much of the animal in him.
The kid’s sharing the ring with Bua, shadowboxing. Sucharit’s in with his boy, pointing up, down, to the side, Bua following Sucharit’s pointing finger with a punch, kick, or sweep. The kid’s working the opposite corner, wearing ring shoes, red trunks, and wrist wraps, flashing hard combos—double-up jab, feint, hook, hook, straight right, bob back, jab-jab, uppercut—exhaling short puffs with each punch.
“Hey, Boo-boo.” He’s taken to calling Bua “Boo-boo” or “Boo-hoo.” Sometimes he’ll creep up behind the boy and holler, Boo! “Why don’t we go a few rounds?”
“Take a break,” I call from the apron. “Don’t have to be a prick every day of your life.”
The kid dances across the canvas, peppering jabs at Bua’s back, coming within inches.
“Come on, Boo-boo, show me what you got.”
I say, “Back off. Now.”
“What’s the matter?” Dancing on the balls of his feet, shuffle-step, pittypat jab-jab-jab. “Is Boo-hoo scared? Boo-hoo a puss?”
Bua doesn’t reply, eyes never leaving Sucharit’s moving finger. I slide between the ropes and push the kid away. “The hell’s your problem?”
He brushes past me and shoves Bua between the shoulder blades. “Let’s do this. Let’s do it up, baby.”
I hook my fingers inside his trunks but, as he’s a legit light heavyweight and I never fought past welterweight, I can’t haul him away. “Keep this up and you’re on the next steamer home.”
Bua turns to face the kid. Nothing in his eyes speaks to anger— still smiling that gap-toothed smile—but his arms hang loose and ready, thigh muscles fluttering.
Sucharit steps between the fighters. “You wan’ fie my boy, hah?” he says to the kid.
“What was your first clue?”
“He fie you, okay, okay. Baa no’ here.”
“Why not?”
“Who watch? Who pay? ”
“Over here it isn’t about who’s swinging the biggest dick,” I say. “The boy’s not gonna fight, nobody’s paying.”
“Cool.” The kid’s throwing jabs that stop inches from Bua’s unblinking eyes. “Make a few bucks kicking his ass.”
“When were you thinking?” I say to Sucharit.
“Nex’ wee. Ban’kok.”
“We’re gonna get it on, ’cause we don’t get a–long! ”
The kid raises his
arms and dances in the center of the ring like Ali.
A PRIZEFIGHTER IS A FREAK. He’s got maybe ten years in the roughest business in the world, a business ruled by a strict hierarchy: winners and losers. He’s not a paperhanger, a lawyer, a beancounter. He doesn’t put on his galoshes, grab his briefcase, catch the trolley, the same daily grind for thirty, forty years. He gives it all now, or never.
Moe Kundler told me that. Moe was a fighter himself, cruiserweight, never held a belt or scored a big payday, a crippling right hook but a weak chin led to three consecutive canvas naps and eliminated him as a contender. The ring turns fighters into freaks by aging them prematurely: that twenty-two-square-foot expanse is a time warp.
The Royal Jubilee Palace arena’s prep area is located in the building’s bowels. Me and the kid in a shoebox-sized room, low ceiling, pipes rattling overhead. Six or seven shattered chicken coops in one corner, floor crusted with plaster flakes and dead roaches. Above, the dim babble of the crowd cheering the semi-main.
I called Moe and asked was it okay the kid fought Bua. I said, “The only way this kid’s going to progress is to take a rude beating. Only way he’ll learn.” Moe was wary when he heard it was a mixed-discipline bout, Muay Thai versus boxing. “Will his record be affected?” I said no, since the fight wasn’t sanctioned. Moe said, “So the other guy can kick?” I said yes, and headbutt, and elbow. Moe said, “Could the kid get hurt bad?” I said, “A chance. What he needs.” Moe said, “Then go for it.”
The kid’s perched on the edge of a prep table. I’m taping his hands. Wrap adhesive gauze around his wrists to protect the eight interlocking carpal bones, across the meat of his palms, his thumbs, fingers to the second knuckle. The wrap’s got to be tight, but not too tight: a fighter with blue hands is bound to break bones and not even know it.
“Flex your fingers,” I say. The kid curls his hands into tight fists. “Okay. Now the gloves.”
I help him on with the gloves—ten ouncers instead of WBA-sanctioned sixteens—and tape them to his wrists. The kid hops off the table, high-stepping, rolling his shoulders loose. Then the sweat comes and he’s shadowboxing, holding his gloves up, juking his head to the right of them, to the left, cracking hard jabs from the guard.
“Stand back in your stance,” I tell him. “Otherwise he’ll kick your thighs into ground chuck.”
The kid’s dressed Tyson chic: black trunks, black ring shoes, no socks or robe, just a black terry-cloth towel with a hole cut in the center to pass his head.
“Remember your elbows,” I say. “Legal in Muay Thai. Headbutts, too.” Like every pro fighter, the kid’s been taught how to fire elbows and butt heads. Only this time he doesn’t have to worry about the DQ.
“For the thousands in attendance, and the millions watching around the globe,” he intones, slamming his fists together. “Let’s get ready to rum–buuuuul! ”
The kid looks pale under the hot ring lights, skin glowing against his dark trappings. Bua’s wearing green trunks fringed with gold, yellow shoes, the traditional Muay Thai headpiece of braided hemp. Although the kid outweighs him by twenty pounds, Bua’s arms and legs are long, rangy, his hands huge—tack hammers, Moe’d call them. Judging by the stare-down it seems probable one or both will leave the ring on a stretcher.
The Royal Jubilee Palace—nicknamed “The Pail”—is a three-tiered arena: its levels, instead of extending outwards, are stacked one atop another, giving fighters the impression they’re fighting at the bottom of a bucket. Ten-foot-high chicken-wire barriers ring each tier to discourage fans from hurling Singha beer bottles and other trash into the ring. The place is rife with chattering voices, like a forest full of monkeys.
I water the kid, grease his cheeks and brows, remove his mouthpiece from the ice bucket and slip it into his mouth. Sucharit is massaging Bua’s shoulders and whispering in his ear. The ref, a tiny balding Thai in a sweat-stained zebra get-up, calls the fighters together, makes them touch gloves. The ocarina quartet place their lips to their wide-bellied instruments. The bell rings.
The kid rushes out, gloves held over his mouth, elbows out, head down, looking at Bua out of the tops of his eyes. Bua circles out of his corner to the left, standing high on his toes, hands low, wrists rotating. They meet near the ropes, Bua stabbing two quick jabs.
The kid takes the first one high on the forehead. The second one he slips over his left shoulder and, stepping in with his right foot, brings his left hand up in a tight arc. The uppercut catches Bua on the throat under his chin. His legs jelly a little. Kid goes low, knees flexing, fires another submarine shot. Bua grabs him, pulling their bodies flush. The kid’s gloves are high on Bua’s chest but he can’t push him off. He brings them up into the boy’s face, rubbing the laces across the cheeks and eyes. He’s looking to the ref for a break.
“No breaks!” I holler over the crowd noise. “Fight out! Fight out! ”
Bua brings his left knee up into the kid’s side beneath the kidney. The kid lets out a grunt. Bua knees him again, putting all his weight into it. The crowd rises to a quick roar. In close, the kid shoves against Bua’s face, gets some separation and brings an elbow up into the gap, shearing it across Bua’s chin. Bua reels into the ring’s center.
The kid comes on, stance switched to southpaw. He jabs once, twice, again, setting up the overhand right. Bua’s still groggy, stepping to his left with the left foot and throwing a left hook over the jab. The kid turns under it and, as he takes the punch above the ear, fires his own right return into the short rib, carrying his weight onto the left foot, ripping another hard right into the same spot.
Bua fires a side-kick into the kid’s thigh, the sound of meat on meat a bullwhip’s crack. The kid staggers but Bua overbalances, too much weight on the back right leg, and the kid recovers to step in low, rising with a powerful right cross.
The boy goes down. He goes down on his butt and the back of his head hits the canvas.
The crowd becomes very still. The ocarina musicians, whose playing had risen to a fever pitch, cease. The boy rises to his knees, gloves pressed to the canvas. Shaking his head violently, shaking the cobwebs off.
“… t’ree … fo’ …”
He reaches for the rope and pulls himself up. Still shaking his head. The kid’s standing in a neutral corner, mugging to the crowd. “It’s all over but the crying, coach,” he says. But it’s not. If he knew anything about anything, he’d know that.
“… si’ … seben …”
The kid can crack; that cross would’ve crumbled most fighters in his weight class. But Bua’s up by the ref’s count of eight. His face is red and glove burned.
The kid charges out of the neutral corner throwing a right-lead haymaker aimed to take the boy’s head off. Bua ducks low and brings a sharp left up into the stomach. The kid caves at the waist and grunts in pain. Swiveling to the outside, Bua vises his arms on either side of his opponent’s head and, thrusting forward, drives first the left knee, then the right, into his gut.
The kid’s tough. But the boy lives tough. The kid fights to remind himself he’s still breathing. The boy thinks about enduring, surviving. They haven’t grown up the same: one has never gone hungry, never watched a man die or fought for his life. All this matters in the ring.
Bua steps back and, as the kid straightens himself, attacks the right leg with three roundhouse kicks. The kid gasps. His knee buckles. Bua feints another roundhouse and, when the kid drops his guard hand, sets both feet and leaps, right arm cocked like a pistol’s hammer, fist smashing into the kid’s face, opening a deep gash over the eyebrow.
Not knowing what to do, the kid bear hugs Bua, tying his arms up. Blood’s pissing out the side of his face and he’s spat the mouthpiece. They butt foreheads and, like magic, the other eyebrow opens up. The kid’s squirting blood all over the damn place.
They break the clinch. The kid must be seeing black from the blood: he’s wiping at both eyes to clear his vision. He’s seeing only the outline of Bua,
dark arms and legs. He’s backing away, staring around at nothing. Now he moves forward, but uncertainly, no strength or conviction in his movements. It happens very quickly.
Planting his left foot on the canvas, Bua pivots forward on his heel. His right arm uncurls like a whip as it comes around, arcing up, a textbook spinning backfist that hits the kid on the left temple and he goes down, eyes closing. He hits the canvas open mouthed—I hear his teeth click shut. The referee kneels, counting, the kid’s body lying there, writhing, trying to get up, unwilling to surrender consciousness.
“… ni’ … ten …”
At one minute and thirty-six seconds of the first round the ref signals for the bell.
The boy walks to his corner and sits on a stool. Sucharit removes the mouthpiece and waters him, smoothing an iced metal swell-stop over the mouse on his forehead. The crowd chants his name but he doesn’t acknowledge them. His face shows no emotion. He looks so old.
Helped by two attendants, I get the kid down to the training room. Crack a smelling salt and wave it under his nose. Five seconds later he regains consciousness and sits up on the table. He stares at me with cloudy blue eyes, face sweat-stung and flecked with dried blood. I flush the cuts with hydrogen peroxide, press split meat together and apply butterfly bandages, make him swallow a few vitamin K tablets.
“You came out like a house on fire,” I tell him. “Had him dazed but went for too much too soon.”
I cut the tape and pull the gloves off. The kid looks at his hands, at his legs, hands again, up at the ceiling. As if he has no idea where he is, as if he cannot quite believe he’s here. Quiet in the room, just the kid breathing. His eyes are unfocused and he raises his left hand in front of them, that hand shivering a little.
“You’ll rebound from this,” I say. “Maybe the best thing for you.”
The kid shoots me a look. Feral, that look. Cold. He lowers his hand to his lap. His index finger points at the floor. I look where his finger is pointing, thinking I should call the doctor because nothing’s on the floor, the floor is bare—
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