On the Chin

by Alex McClintock

  There was nothing high-budget about the fights at Souths. Like most other sports, boxing at the grassroots level is not glamorous and relies almost entirely on the work of passionate volunteers. The Souths Juniors red corner dressing room said it all. It was not, in fact, a room but a wide access corridor strewn with gym bags, boxing gloves, skipping ropes and drink bottles.

  Other boxers, most younger than me, were already warming up: skipping, shadow-boxing or being put through pads by their coaches. A double fire door, half-open, led out to the auditorium and ring. A small knot of fighters stood in the doorway, feigning interest in whatever fight was on while they eyed the boxers standing in the entrance to the blue corner dressing room across the hall, who were likewise pretending to watch the action in the ring. I stood at the back of the group on tiptoes, hoping to catch a glimpse of my opponent, though I had no idea what he looked like. Eventually I decided this was making my anxiety worse and retreated, but over the next hour and a bit, unable to resist the temptation, I returned to the doorway several times to get a peek.

  For his part, Paul had begun to pace from one side of the corridor to the other. Time was not passing. Every fight took an age. At some point, George, David and a group of other friends arrived and sat down at a table in the back. They cheered as I walked through the crowd to greet them. For the first time, I understood what people mean when they talk about a weak smile. I had to will the corners of my mouth towards my ears. Too overwrought to talk, I shook hands and retreated back to the dressing room.

  There was still forever to go, no point in warming up. I sat on the floor and felt the muffled PA system through the wall. I opened and closed a folded copy of the bout sheet, pointlessly checking and re-checking the progress of the fights. Paul asked redundantly if I was nervous. ‘Yep.’ Another weak smile.

  Another trip to the doorway yielded no sign of my opponent, but a disturbing view of two teenagers from the Central West of New South Wales belting each other into bloody messes with gloves that looked huge at the ends of their spindly arms. From his table, George made a fist at me. It was too much. I returned to Paul, still pacing at the back of the room.

  ‘It’s normal. It’s normal to have nerves,’ he said nervously. ‘I had nerves before every fight I ever had. It’s good. It makes you sharp. When you don’t have nerves: that’s when you should be worried.’

  This was not much of a consolation at the time, but there’s probably some truth to it. Every fighter must face fear. Al Silvani, one of the Stillman’s trainers, said that no fighter is truly calm before a fight: ‘They all have their different methods of fright. They all have that fright inside…They’re not calm. The inside is moving on you.’

  Thinking back on it, I also have a better understanding of why Paul was so nervous. It wasn’t just the vicarious tension all coaches must feel before a competition, but a lingering, subconscious reaction left over from his own time as a fighter. Knowing you are about to fight is such an unnaturally intense, perhaps even traumatic, feeling that it leaves a physical memory. I had nowhere near as many fights as Paul did, and to this day I can’t see a boxer in a tiled dressing room on television without my body flooding with second-hand adrenaline. Writing this, my heart is hammering and I’m back in that corridor.

  Once the card reached the halfway point, time did the nightmare thing again, going from slow motion to fast forward like a record played at the wrong speed. The bells between rounds echoed in the corridor with alarming frequency. Fighters headed out for fights and returned, seemingly seconds later, bearing new bruises and trophies.

  Paul, at least, seemed to gain a sense of purpose, and told me it was time to get changed and warm up.

  I pulled on a tight red singlet, purchased earlier that week from the Sydney University boxing club and made from some do-not-expose-to-open-flame sort of material, a big leather cup to protect me from low blows and a pair of oversized shorts. Paul had warned me to make sure my shorts could accommodate the groin protector so, in my state of permanent anxiety about everything, I had bought them several sizes too large. I’ve always thought the short shorts Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns wore in the 1980s were the height of ring cool, but my billowing boxers were even more retro: I looked like a 1920s golfer. The overall effect was not as intimidating as I would have hoped, especially when paired with the slightly too-small singlet.

  I skipped on the unfamiliar floor, tangling my feet even more than normal, then shadow-boxed. Paul helped me pull my gloves on, and we started to do pads. ‘Jab,’ he commanded quietly. ‘Jab. Jab. Quickly. That’s it. Faster. Be first.’

  The staccato rhythm of my gloves hitting his leather pads filled the corridor. At Paul’s command we stopped, and both walked in tight circles getting our breath. Then we started again.

  ‘Hands up. Jab. In and out. Bring it back. Double jab.’

  We stopped and walked in circles again. I needed to piss. Boxing gloves are not ideal apparel for a man with a nervous bladder. Paul helped me take them off and I ran down the corridor to the bathroom. I leaned on the brick wall, painted pastel blue. It turns out I didn’t need to piss after all. I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat was pounding in my temples, my skin crawling, my amygdala going fucking bananas. The intense rush when someone stops you from stepping in front of a bus, but without end. Was it too late to slip out the back door and into the cool night?

  Yes. It was too late. Paul Toweel was calling my name over the rasping PA. Back in the corridor, Paul looked me in the eye. ‘You can do this,’ he said.

  Paul Toweel called Alex Aaty, which he pronounced ‘Alex Orty.’

  My coach put his hands on my shoulders and walked me out the door, through the crowd and into the ring.

  CLARET

  ‘I WANT A good, clean fight. Listen to me and obey my commands. Protect yourselves at all times. Shake hands now and come out punching at the bell.’

  Alex Aaty was shorter than me, and sturdier. He had dark eyes, teak-coloured skin and a gentle face that wore a confused but determined expression, like a teenager forced to read Shakespeare aloud. To be fair, I imagine I looked quite overwhelmed myself.

  My vermilion fight gloves, provided by the boxing association, were wet with the sweat of earlier use but feather-light and hard, like an old pair of leather shoes. Inside, their seams scratched my thumbs and wrists. I held both mitts up, and we shook hands the only way you can while wearing gloves. He didn’t pound my fists or try to psych me out with a staring competition, which was a relief: I would have lost.

  Back in the corner, I rolled my shoulders and shook my arms. My heart sat several inches north of where it belonged. ‘This is going to be easy,’ said Paul.

  Not true, but I appreciated the sentiment. It was a wonder I heard the bell with all the blood in my ears.

  The referee’s instructions had been simple, but I managed to disobey ‘come out punching’ in the very first second of the fight, confirming, to anyone who had any doubts, my status as a complete novice. The first thing I did was to raise my fist to touch gloves again. My opponent, being just as green as I was, happily obliged. The referee, a middle-aged man dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, white latex gloves and white pants with no tie, so that he resembled a worker in a cheese factory, shouted ‘Stop!’ in a sharp voice and told us off. Chastened, we both nodded.

  ‘Box!’ yelled the referee, and waved his hands together.

  Alex Aaty bounced on the balls of his feet. The noise of his boots pounding the sprung timber under the canvas filled the room. I figured I’d better do something, so I stepped forward with a probing jab. To my surprise as much as his, it landed right between his eyes. Offended, he rushed forward, winging punches, so I freaked out and did the first thing that came to mind, which was to throw another jab, much harder than the first. This too connected, snapping his head back, and in his blind rush forward he lost his balance and fell to the floor, forcing the referee to step in and wipe his gloves (in case they had picked up some g
rit from the canvas that might scratch my face).

  Things seem to be going as well as could reasonably be expected, I thought, tempting fate. Almost immediately, my blue-clad foe threw a looping right over one of my jabs, then unloaded with both hands, pushing me back towards my own corner. My hands were up, but his punches thudded home. I knew I was being hit but didn’t feel it. The only sensation was the sound of impact, like cannon fire, and the hot friction as the leather of his glove tugged on the skin near my eye. ‘That’s odd,’ I thought, my conscious brain working on a different level from the wounded-animal panic that screamed from every other part of me to get out of the corner.

  My next thought was about the punches whistling past my nose. These seemed much scarier than those that were landing. ‘Wow, he must really be trying to knock me out,’ I thought idly.

  I had thrown no more than a dozen punches, but already my arms were heavy. How long had it been? I looked around for a clock but couldn’t find one. I was on my own, without even the time to comfort me. Unknown, it seemed as much my opponent as the boy in blue.

  With no better ideas about what to do, I took a deep breath and heaved my left glove forward, into his face again. This time it was more of a push than a snapping punch. The referee yelled ‘Stop,’ in his penetrating voice and made a hand gesture that I assumed meant ‘If you’re going to keep sticking your fist in this guy’s face, do the decent thing and be quick about it.’ Ever the goody two-shoes, I was mortified to have been told off in front of everyone. I resolved to do my best to stay out of trouble.

  The pattern of the fight, such as it was, had established itself: I would stick Alex Aaty with my jab, and Alex Aaty would try to bum-rush me. The repetition was at risk of becoming tedious.

  ‘Don’t wait on him, be first,’ yelled my opponent’s coach. I braced myself for him to charge forward again, which he duly did. I absorbed a left hook and spun away, helplessly trying to push the headgear out of my eyes with my gloved hands. Then the bell went. The referee casually slid a hand into the air between us, as if to shake hands with an invisible counterpart. Sweet relief, the round was over.

  I hesitated; which of the four corners was Paul in? Oh right, he was behind me, already galloping up the stairs. I turned and walked to him. I was used up. My muscles ached, my lungs screamed. It felt like I had been in the ring throwing punches for hours, but it had only been a few minutes. In the years since, I’ve run a half marathon and done an open water swim, but neither exhausted me half as much as the first round of that first fight. I didn’t know if I could continue, but I had no choice.

  I stood in the corner—Paul said that I didn’t sit in training, so why would I in a fight?—and rested my arms on the ropes. He pulled them down to my sides.

  ‘You’re doing a good job,’ he said, now as serene as a school guidance counsellor. Dave, who was holding the bucket and sitting at the bottom of the stairs, smiled his big smile and gave me the thumbs-up.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Good,’ I gasped, lying.

  Paul gently touched his outstretched fingertips to my chest, palm up. He told me to breathe, raising his open hand like a yogi. I tried, but my lungs refused to inflate the whole way.

  ‘He has no answer for your jab,’ Paul said. ‘Stick at it. Don’t lose concentration. Don’t try to hit him hard, just be fast. In and out, in and out, like we practised. Now breathe.’

  Paul poured water in my mouth. The clapper sounded and ‘Seconds down,’ came the voice over the loudspeaker. How did that minute pass so quickly?

  ‘Round two.’

  ‘Don’t shake this time,’ said the ref.

  •

  Now seems like a good time to explain the difference between the rules of amateur boxing—the sport I briefly competed in at a very humble level—and those of the professionals.

  The development of the amateurs in the late nineteenth century was rooted in typical (though perhaps justified) Victorian snobbishness about the moral effects of prize fighting, particularly on the lower orders. The motto of the British Amateur Boxing Association was ‘Box, don’t fight’. Amateur boxers would compete with gloves (both gloved and bare-knuckle bouts were taking place in the professional ranks at the time) and fight three three-minute rounds. The upstanding chaps involved in the amateurs would not deign to receive anything so vulgar as payment for their services—they would compete for the simple love of being smacked in the nose, a point of difference that continues to this day (at least in theory: in reality many countries pay their top amateurs a stipend as well as bonuses for winning medals at major competitions, while some boxers are allowed to sign lucrative endorsement deals).

  As the twentieth century progressed, the original class-conscious distinction between the two branches of the sport evolved into one of ethos: amateur boxing has tended to be more focused on skills and safety, while professional boxing is about money, entertainment and winning at all costs.

  While the basic rules of boxing are shared (use your hands and not any other part of your body to hit your opponent, don’t hit them below the belt or on the back of the head), there are a number of technical differences between the amateurs and the pros. Amateurs are forbidden from any sort of grappling, while the pros are only forbidden from excessive holding, and even then the rule is inconsistently enforced. Similarly, you rarely see a professional fighter told off for bending, slapping, pushing or blocking their opponent’s vision with their lead hand, all of which are forbidden to amateurs. Amateurs still fight three rounds, while the pros fight up to twelve. And amateurs sometimes wear headgear.

  This last point is the source of some controversy. Most boxers, amateur and professional, wear headgear in sparring to protect against cuts caused by accidental headbutts. But padded helmets were only introduced to competition in 1983, as a sop to the American Medical Association, which was calling for the sport to be banned. There wasn’t much evidence that headgear protects fighters, but AIBA, amateur boxing’s governing body, was desperate to differentiate itself from the professional side of the sport following the death of Korean lightweight Duk Koo-Kim in a televised fight.

  In the decades since then, head-injury experts have repeatedly pointed out that headgear does little to protect the brain—foam padding does not absorb enough energy to change the overall effect of a punch—and in 2016 AIBA backflipped, ruling that top-level male boxers would no longer have to wear it. They cited their own research, which suggested that headgear actually increased the risk of concussion. Some have speculated this might be because headgear gives boxers a false sense of security, but having worn it, I reckon it’s because it blocks your vision and makes your noggin a bigger target.

  The updated rules do not apply to female boxers (or non-elite male competitors), who still have to wear headgear in competition. If headgear does increase the risk of concussion, then the decision to exclude women is curious at best and irresponsible at worst. AIBA’s explanation, that parallel research hasn’t been done regarding women, concussion and headgear, and that change must proceed ‘step by step’, leaves a lot to be desired. Surely men and women aren’t so different that they get concussed in different ways.

  But the change is best understood less as a medical decision and more as part of a push to make amateur boxing more entertaining and profitable. Removing headgear makes it easier for spectators to identify with boxers. Around the same time as removing headgear from elite men’s competition, AIBA invited professional boxers to enter the Olympics (few took them up) and launched an international, semi-pro competition called the World Series of Boxing, which features eccentrically named international teams like the Astana Arlans and France Fighting Roosters.

  Compared to the upheavals amateur boxing has undergone in recent years, the rules of the professional ring are now relatively settled. Sure, there are minor differences between jurisdictions on issues like the three knockdown rule (whether a fighter is allowed to continue after being knocked down three times in a
ny one round) and what happens when a fighter cannot continue because of a cut caused by an accidental headbutt, but for the most part the rules are the rules.

  But it hasn’t always been so. The regulations that governed bare-knuckle prize fighting were quite different from those of modern boxing, and not just in the obvious respect of the gloves. Jack Broughton’s Rules (eighteenth century), then the London Prize Ring Rules (nineteenth century), governed all manner of things, some of them rather quaint.

  ‘Each man shall be provided with a handkerchief of a colour suitable to his own fancy, and that the seconds proceed to entwine these handkerchiefs at the upper end of one of the centre stakes. These handkerchiefs shall be called “the colours”; the winner of the battle at its conclusion shall be entitled to their possession, as the trophy of victory,’ reads the 1838 version of the rules.

  Handkerchiefs aside, bare-knuckle fights were very different from their gloved successors. Fighters often wore spiked shoes because the bouts were held on grassy fields. Outdoor venues were necessary before the adoption of electric lights, but remote locations also allowed the Fancy to avoid the constabulary. While prize fighting was not illegal per se, in the wake of the French Revolution abroad and Chartist uprisings at home, English authorities took a very dim view of large public gatherings, fearing they might lead to armed insurrection.

  In Australia the paranoia was probably even more pronounced, given that until the middle of the nineteenth century criminals, ex-criminals and their children made up the majority of the population. In both countries, the day of a fight would begin with a large caravan of fans setting out in convoy from a metropolitan centre, bound for a pre-determined secret location in the countryside. At the start of the fight a coin toss decided which fighter would face into the sun, and inclement weather could have a major effect on the outcome of a bout.

  Grappling and throws were not only permitted, but accepted as key parts of the game. Rounds lasted until one fighter was knocked down, and even then the combatants were only given thirty seconds rest. Between rounds, the principals sat not on stools but on the knees of their chief seconds, and fights ended when one could not return to ‘the scratch’, a line marked through the middle of the ring, within eight seconds (hence the phrase ‘not up to scratch’).