On the Chin

by Alex McClintock

  My mates cheered as I exited the ring and headed for the dressing room, stopping on the way to sign forms and receive back my ring record book. It now contained a single entry marked W-RSC2: win, referee stopped contest round two.

  Paul was almost as relieved as me. Back in the corridor he laughed and wrapped me in a huge bear hug. ‘Before you go celebrate we should talk about what worked and what didn’t work, while it’s fresh in your memory,’ he said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘The jab was great. You couldn’t miss with it. That was the story of the night.’

  ‘I couldn’t land the right hand,’ I said, blinking. The skin around my right eye, where I had felt my opponent’s glove snag in the first round, was swollen.

  ‘That’s all right. It was the first one. It’s about trying things. Next time I think we work on your defence, not just covering up but punching in between their punches, more variety in the attack. I really couldn’t be happier with this as a first bout, though. You did it! What an experience.’

  ‘Thanks for everything, mate.’

  ‘It was the best,’ he said emphatically.

  We hugged again, and he put the groin protector, pads and headgear into his duffel bag.

  ‘Just watch out about having too many beers tonight. Not that you got hit much, it’s just a killer with the dehydration. You’ll feel terrible.’

  ‘Stay and have one?’

  ‘Nah mate, you enjoy it with your friends. Congratulations again. Take a few days off, I’ll call you later in the week.’

  He waved to David and jogged off, still smiling, car keys in hand. Dazed, I wandered back to my friends, who’d moved to a spot right in front of the ring. There was a cold VB sweating on the table for me. Smiles. Claps on the back. Hugs and kisses.

  I soaked up the attention. They had come here to watch me and I hadn’t let them down, I’d shown them what I could do and who I really was. Or maybe I had shown myself what I could do and who I really was, with them as witnesses. Either way I felt satisfied, the centre of attention; beloved. We headed out into the chilly air and I stood in a halo of aquarium-coloured light, feeling like the heavyweight champion of the world walking out of Madison Square Garden onto Eighth Avenue. It was nearly midnight and I’d eaten nothing since the thermos of tepid oatmeal. Paul needn’t have worried about the beers. The middleweight champion of South Sydney wanted to get Chinese takeaway on the drive home and sleep for a thousand years.

  THE LATE REPLACEMENT

  WHEN I WOKE the day after the fight, I lay in bed for a long time, feeling the sheets with my bruised body. My face was puffy and my neck stiff, but it was more uncomfortable than painful, as if I’d been in a minor car accident rather than a boxing match. The only thing seriously swollen was my ego. The events of the night before, so overwhelming at the time, had resolved themselves in memory. Of course I had won. I had never doubted I would, not even for a second.

  When I got up and went to the kitchen to have a cup of tea, Mum hugged me and gently touched her thumb to the tiny purple mark in the corner of my right eye socket. The night before, she had dramatically asked my brother to text her when the fight was over, ‘if Alex is still alive’.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve got that out of your system now,’ she said. ‘But don’t you feel bad for that boy you beat? It sounds horrid.’

  ‘Not really,’ I shrugged, enjoying the fuss.

  Later, I went into HK Ward. I’d heard the reverent tone with which boxing commentators speak about fighters who are ‘back in the gym the next day’ and figured that showing my face would let everyone know how serious I was. Of course, I was also keen to tell anyone who would listen about my great victory. Having seen it from ringside, George had quickly tired of my re-enactments and Mum wasn’t interested in them at all.

  When I arrived it was sunset and the gym was full, the windows steamed up. Everyone had already heard the news. Moffo slapped me on the back before I had made it halfway across the darkened room. Matt with the kangaroo tattoo, who was ready to make his own debut, gripped me in a brotherly embrace and asked me to talk him through it. Regulars I’d never spoken to before came up, shook my hand and offered congratulations.

  Even as the days passed and my initial excitement faded, people at the gym treated me with new respect, even deference. Active fighters were the gym’s standard bearers. The rowdy college boys asked me for advice. Other trainers offered to put me through pads. Paul, too, acted like things had changed. As usual, we had our most deep and meaningful chats standing in the ring between rounds of pads, in the early afternoon when there was no one else around and the smell of cut grass drifted up from the oval.

  ‘That can be a one-off if you want,’ he said, about a week after the fight. ‘It’s something you’ll always be able to say you did. But I reckon you could have more fights and do well. You could go for a state title, even. It’s early days, and it’s a bit late for 2012, but we could think about Australian titles, Commonwealth Games in 2014.’

  ‘You think?’

  I didn’t know whether to grin or blush. Paul, I suspect, was just trying to build me up. He didn’t expect me to take his words to heart, but I don’t think he counted on how little sporting experience I had. Nintendo Magazine publishing a fast lap time I recorded on Mario Kart 64 when I was eleven was the closest I’d ever come to an athletic achievement.

  ‘Yep, you’ve got a great jab, you’re tall and awkward, you can bang a bit with your right hand.’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘If you want to get better, we should fight again as soon as possible, and fight as often as possible. You can’t beat that experience.’

  ‘What about the fights at Souths next month?’

  ‘Done,’ said Paul.

  Why would I sign up so quickly to repeat an experience I found so deeply unpleasant the first time round? Ego, mainly. The lead-up to the fight might have been psychologically and physically exhausting, but the aftermath was fantastic. I had never felt like such a winner. And in the unreliable way of memory, that night at Souths, with all its terror, had begun to seem like a real adventure. For the first time I understood why people climb up sheer cliffs, surf mountain-sized waves and jump off skyscrapers wearing spandex suits. You do it the first time just to be able to say you did, and before you know it everything else starts to seem a little pedestrian.

  It helped that the process of getting ready really was less painful the second time round. With my registration and medical exam already completed, there were no further administrative tasks to get neurotic about. Armed with the knowledge that I’d gone three kilos overboard the last time out, even dieting was easier. That left us to focus on ‘training the house down’, as Paul put it. And train the house down we did. I imagined I was the subject of an episode of 24/7, HBO’s long-running series of pre-pay-per-view hype documentaries.

  I could practically see my sweat f lying in glorious high-definition as I hit the heavy bag. I could envision the cutaway interviews with Paul. I could picture the tracking shot of me overtaking Lycra-clad mums pushing strollers as I jogged around the bay each morning, shadow-boxing as I went. I could hear Liev Schrieber’s gravelly voiceover: ‘On Tuesday night two men will meet in an ancient rite in the Sydney suburb of Kingsford: only one can emerge victorious.’

  Yes, I was getting a little carried away. But the preparation really was intense. On top of morning jogs and afternoon gym sessions, each week Paul would drive David and me out to the oval near his house to do 400-metre repeats on the track chalked into the scrubby grass. The drill was simple. Two minutes between sprints. The longer you spend going round the track, the less rest you get. Paul stood at the starting line with a stopwatch, dressed as ever in his blue trackpants. ‘Go,’ he said, expressionless, each time the two minutes elapsed. I could plod OK, but I wasn’t much of a sprinter. David beat me every time, despite his shorter legs. After the sixth repeat, which took the best part of the two minutes and left my legs aflame with lacti
c acid, I spewed up my lunch at Paul’s feet. He made me do another lap.

  Then there was the sparring, dozens of rounds with David and Matt. There’s something about the intimacy and the adrenaline of sharing a ring that draws people together—I’ve seen and experienced it again and again in different gyms. That’s probably why Matt and I became friends so quickly. In some ways it was a natural fit: we were two guys the same size and the same age, just starting out as fighters.

  But in other ways, we were very different. Where I loved to share my opinion with anyone who would listen, Matt spoke rarely, as if through clenched teeth. And it was plain to see on his narrow, already-lined face that his life had been harder than mine. It was only years later, when we went out drinking together and he pointed out the Salvation Army youth refuge he lived in as a teenager, that I understood just how much harder.

  Even before that, I knew Matt trained with an intensity I couldn’t match. As confident as I was becoming, I often felt, standing next to him, that everyone in the gym could see how soft I was in comparison. If Matt ever picked up on this, he never said anything. Instead, he made it clear we were brothers. He didn’t talk about that, either, but he didn’t need to. We spent hours in the ring speaking without words. We learned from each other, taught each other and grew together. He would stalk forward, jerking his gloved hands around, his face set in a grimace. I would try to slide away, to jab, to slip and counter. We were evenly matched; he came forward and threw more punches, but my defence was better. Afterwards we would sit on the gym floor in silence, steam coming off our shoulders in the evening air.

  Despite the easier lead-up, as the night of the next fight approached, the sense of dread returned. Again, I was stuck between the desire to run away and the urge to get it over with.

  I sat around at home chewing my nails, thinking about my empty stomach and getting on my mother’s nerves. ‘I think it’s stupid that you want to go and get hit in the head, but you chose to do it so don’t subject the rest of us to your misery,’ she said. Which was fair, but only made me more miserable.

  Then, the day before the bout, the phone rang. It was Paul Toweel.

  ‘Hi matey, just letting you know the boxer we were going to match you with has had to withdraw.’

  My heart soared. This was better than being diagnosed with a medical condition. I felt a pang of disappointment at the wasted preparation, and one of guilt at my unheroic attitude. But they were only pangs.

  ‘Oh…that is just terrible news,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry, we should be able to find you a replacement,’ he replied.

  My heart sank. I was Frederick Scott, who escaped an icy grave as a crew member on the Titanic only to die when the boiler of his next ship, La Marguerite, exploded.

  So, following instructions, I turned up at the gym on the day of the fight as planned, dragging my overstuffed gym bag. Again Paul gave me a lift from HK Ward to the venue, and again we watched the flying foxes stream out of Centennial Park as we drove by. Again we pulled up in the car park early, and again we headed up the escalators past the potted palms and the pokies. I had no idea whether I was going to spend the night as spectator to violence or participant. As bad as it had been knowing I had to fight someone, not knowing was worse.

  But things resolved themselves quickly once we arrived at the room with the scales and the doctor. Paul Toweel met us outside, ruddy faced and smiling under his bushy moustache. He had made some calls and found a last-minute substitute. The guy would be fighting for the first time tonight, but he and his trainer were up for it if Paul and I were.

  ‘It looks like we’ve got ourselves a fight then,’ he said.

  And at that moment, Fritzy walked in with Jake.

  It had never crossed my mind that I might have to fight my former friend, but of course it made sense. The pool of novice boxers who weighed seventy-five kilograms and lived in Sydney could not have been very deep. But was it fair? He had been boxing for a lot longer than me, even if he hadn’t had a fight yet. And why hadn’t he had a fight? He had been talking about it a year ago when we first met. Was he trying to gain an unbeatable edge in experience? Did he have one now?

  I appraised the pair of them as they approached. They hadn’t changed much. Jake looked fitter, more drawn. I could see his fine cheekbones under his olive skin. Fritzy was the same as ever. He thrust his face a bit too close to mine and shook my hand a bit too firmly.

  ‘Good to see you, mate,’ he said, in such a way as to leave no doubt that it was not good to see me at all, but he was willing to pretend in this specific circumstance in which his protégé was about to kick my arse.

  Jake and I greeted each other bashfully. He mumbled a few words, set his jaw and tried to hold my eye. Was he going in for Tyson-style showmanship, trying to intimidate me, or was he just nervous?

  I know I was, and the anxiety congealed into a sticky mess along with the embarrassment and guilt I felt for leaving them behind. It was like running into a girlfriend you dumped. You’re still fond of them, but you can’t say so because it will make you look like even more of a dirtbag, and anyway they loathe you now.

  I mumbled something back and wanted to melt into the carpet. Making chit-chat with the nice guy who introduced you to boxing but now kind of hates you because he thinks you betrayed his trainer and now you have to fight each other because you both weigh the same and the state amateur boxing association said so is not a situation you can really prepare for.

  Thankfully, at that moment the doctor called me in. It was the same middle-aged guy from the last fight, with the same resigned air and the same polar fleece vest. He asked whether I was carrying any blood-borne diseases and whether I’d been knocked out recently. No on both counts, though he only had my word for it. I ceremonially took off my trackpants and sneakers, and stepped onto the scale pad in bare feet. The needle swung back and forth jauntily, but settled at a healthy seventy-four kilograms. I smiled and made a little fist at Paul, signed the forms presented to me and left my blue book with the officials.

  As Jake and I swapped places in the doctor’s room, I noted how much taller he was than my last opponent—my height; perhaps a little taller. I tried to cast my mind back to our last sparring session. It was six months ago, just before David and I defected, and it had been just like all the others: Jake dipping and sliding behind his shoulder while I flailed away at him, doing about as much damage as a cat at a scratching pole. Every so often he would pause the defensive manoeuvres to swat me with a heavy fist attached to a long arm. I imagined what getting whacked by him in little fight gloves would feel like. Not good, I was willing to bet.

  We milled around awkwardly in the auditorium and Fritzy fixed Paul with such an open look of hatred I was surprised not to see smoke rising from a little red dot on my coach’s forehead. Paul was oblivious. Jake and I shook hands; the next time we saw each other would be under lights.

  Once again, Paul and I repaired to the pizza shop a few doors down to discuss strategy. I was in a daze, mentally replaying the passive-aggressive confrontation that was about to become an aggressive-aggressive confrontation.

  I didn’t realise until we sat down across from each other that Paul was in a completely different frame of mind. Gone was the nervous energy of the first fight. This time he was doing a poor job of concealing his delight. His eyes were sparkling and the corners of his mouth kept twitching towards a smile.

  ‘You have got this, Alex. You have got this,’ he kept saying as I munched away at my porridge.

  I suspect that in Jake, Paul saw a chance to prove himself as a coach. Jake had been boxing for a lot longer than I had; he had always dominated me in sparring. Beating him would be proof for Paul that his philosophy of boxing was superior to Fritzy’s.

  Paul was utterly dismissive of the way Jake imitated Floyd’s shoulder roll. In this stance, sometimes known as The Philly Shell, a boxer holds their lead hand as if in a sling to protect against body blows, relying on their po
wer hand, lead shoulder and head movement for defence. When deployed by a skilled practitioner, it allows for a much more open field of vision than a traditional stance, and puts a boxer in a strong position to throw right-hand counters as their opponent reaches in. But Paul did not consider Jake a skilled practitioner.

  He was trying to keep a lid on his excitement, though. I imagine he didn’t want to make me complacent. The result was a slightly schizoid pre-fight pep talk that swung between breezy dismissal of my opponent and compensatory ominous warnings.

  ‘Look, we’ve seen him in the gym. We know he holds his hands low and tries to do the shoulder roll. Maybe you can get away with that if you’re Floyd Mayweather. But he’s not Floyd Mayweather. We’re going to punish him for that. If you push him back and keep putting that jab in his face he’s not going to know what to do.

  ‘But whatever you do you have to keep your own hands up. You can’t get lazy and let him hit you with those right-hand counters. The referee could put a count on you. You could get stopped!’ This last bit sounded worrying, but I could tell Paul’s heart wasn’t really in it.

  His confidence was rubbing off on me. I wouldn’t say I was blasé, but compared to a month earlier the nerves had certainly been dialled down.

  ‘Jab, first attack, step back, second attack. Just like we practised.’ It sounded pretty easy when he said it like that. I reached across the patterned metal table and grabbed a piece of pizza. Paul grinned.

  Again I was in the red corner. Same corridor-turned-dressing-room. Same explosion of pads, gloves and duffel bags on the floor. Same group of friends at the same table in the back.