It shocks me that Oscar Wilde claimed there was “no such thing as an omen;” my family has always stood by the fact that being superstitious was an Irish birthright, akin to my burn-before-I-can-blink complexion and greenhazel eyes. It didn’t surprise me, then, that I felt I jinxed myself into the injury that supplanted the November 2009 fight: I blogged it, didn’t knock sufficient wood, and that made it not-happen. That’s why I purposely did not come here to think in public about my actual first fight, which went down Saturday March 20, 2010. Part of me believed that if I spoke of it, it would never be.
The first stirring of the fight occurred in early February. Co-Coach let me know that a fellow local trainer and longtime friend contacted him and asked if he’d be willing to match me with a girl on his team, a girl who has more experience than I (three Fights in the Ring) and is ten years my junior. Co-Coach agreed immediately, and in the ethers of the boxing world, it was on, before I even knew of it.
It wasn’t the most flattering situation. I knew they were looking for me because they thought I’d be an easy win for her, someone she could walk over, maybe pull off a TKO or ref stoppage for her record. I vowed that, no matter what, I would not be that girl. Win or lose, she would know we’d fought. That’s the promise that drove my training for the weeks leading up to the bout. When I felt like I couldn’t run one more set of stairs in the Uni stadium or grunt out one more pushup or take one more shot in the gut from a medicine ball, I spurred myself with the knowledge that they thought I’d be a pushover. I sparred tougher partners, ran sprints until I cried, applied more and more tape to hands and wrists increasingly battered by the impact of constant heavy bag work. In the dizzy moments between sleep and waking, those times when one’s body jumps involuntarily as dreams start to cloud over consciousness, I was still punching, my hands flapping weakly out in front of me. I lived this sport.
That’s how I showed up on March 20th in the hardest-edged shape of my life. Weigh-ins, pre-fight physical, and handwraps approval behind me, I found myself gloved up and waiting to go in.
And…let’s go to the video. I’ve watched it twice so far, and found it too unsettling to view it again, or in any great detail.
I see myself waiting to get into the ring; my jaw muscles flare as I bite down on my mouthpiece. Lo stands serious beside me, rearranging the towel over his shoulder. This is a towel that has been a part of our bathroom rotation for the last few years. It is there tonight to wipe sweat, blood, and water from my face between rounds. It is there to be thrown to the canvas if Lo feels I’m overwhelmed and the ref isn’t protecting me as he should. It is there to complete Lo’s outfit as Trainer, along with a squirt-water bottle and a small blue pail.
I see myself climb the three stairs to the ring, duck between the ropes without waiting for Lo to join me and separate them with his hand and knee. I turn to the chairs lining the floor, lift my glove to “my” crowd: three colleagues/soulmates from my PhD department. Their faces, just about the only white faces in the crowd, are split by catcalls that explode from their lips when I acknowledge them. I see myself turn back to the ring as the ref checks my mouthpiece and the tape over the laces on my gloves, makes sure my headgear is secure. I hear the bell ring and watch myself stalk diagonally across the ring to – finally – see this thing through.
I can’t adequately describe what I see from this point on, much less explain what it felt like being there. She’s a brawler: she wanted to stand toe-to-toe and exchange power shots. Her experience allowed her to dictate the pace of the fight more than I should have allowed: there are times when we do just that. She landed more big hits than I – a left hook in the first-of-four rounds threw a blanket over the hearing in my right ear for the next few hours. But I make my mark; in less flamboyant ways, I make my mark. I sting her with jab after jab, following up with the right to the head or body – less than I should, but following up. When I come on, she backs off. For a brief moment that makes Lo snort with laughter and hiccup “Rewind…rewind!” I go southpaw (?!?).
Between rounds I hitch and heave air into my lungs in as controlled a manner as possible when my heart rate is maxed out in a manner that would make a Stairmaster tell me to “Slow Down.” Co-Coach is inches from my face, his lips a blur as he tries to compress 33 years of boxing experience into a one-minute break. He pulls my arms down from the ropes where I’ve rested them – it doesn’t look good, makes you look tired and the judges are always watching.
I go out for each of my four, sometimes ebbing, sometimes flowing. Supporters standing near the gym associate who videoed for us scream my name along with advice that I never heard. My form sometimes suffers, but this dance is a testament to muscle memory: my left fires, retracts to protect my temple. My right moves away from my ear, going out to meet her glove, regains its senses and tucks back to my cheekbone. Knees bend, weight pushes off the right toe, shoulders trade the lead position to keep my head in motion. I see myself take punches and I cannot believe I kept my feet; more – I kept answering back. For every looping, immensely heavy hit she lands, I pop two or three back at her. Still, it’s hard to think about anything but how brutalized I’m feeling.
I knew I’d lost, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to finish out the ritual, congratulate her on a fine ass-whipping, clean up, and go sit down somewhere. Lo caught the mouthpiece I spit at him and stripped off my headgear while Co-Coach yanked the tape from the laces and the gloves from my hands. Lo squirted water on the towel, which now looked like something from an episode of Cold Case Files, scrubbed my face to send me into the middle as composed-looking as possible.
The first inkling I have that this was actually a good fight (as in, not utterly one-sided) is the fact that the ref and announcer, still awaiting the read from the judges’ cards, say so: the ref grins big at both of us and says reverently, “That was a fight.” The announcer brays something I can’t recall, but typical tropes dictate “How about these two fighters?!?!” The ref raises both our hands, spins in place like a small sun as we orbit around him, taking in the people on all sides of the ring. The audience roars, many on their feet. We return to our original position: me the left of the ref, she to the right, our wrists in his hands. Waiting.
“Annnnddd…we have a decision. From Las Cruces [[We’re both from Las Cruces]]; fighting out of….the bluuuuuuuuuue corner [[Wha…?]]…BECKI GRAHAMmmmmmm!!!”
I see “my” crowd leaping in the air; a trophy is thrust in my hand as I’m shuttled out of the ring to check in with the doctor. I’m already forgotten as the next pair of fighters climbs in to learn their fate. The doctor looks at my face, asks, “Are you OK?” “Uh-huh,” I reply, nodding like a bobblehead on a dirt road. He smiles, signs my passbook, and says, “Congratulations.” I walk back to the dressing room, where two young girls I’ve helped coach are waiting. They debuted tonight, too, and they won tonight, too. J’s nose is still dripping; R has an abrasion on her left cheek. Their eyes are silver-bright as they try to shove one another out of the way to hug me. I embrace each of them, put my back into an empty corner of the room, slide to the floor and begin crying. J and R look stunned, suddenly uncertain. A coach reassures them, “It’s just the adrenaline coming off. She’s fine.”
And I am fine. My nose bled off-and-on for most of the following day. My neck felt like I’d been in a minor car accident. Regardless, I was back in the gym the Monday after the fight – stiff and a little hesitant, but working. And, I realized, for the first time in close to two months, I was having fun. With no fight hanging over my head, I actually found myself smiling as I worked mitts. My heart raced from exertion, but not from the epinephrine that slammed my system each time I thought about what I had to do in the weeks leading up to the match.
Co-Coach is already looking ahead to the Next One, three weeks away. I’ve not yet decided what I’ll tell him, but I’m fairly certain I don’t want to do this again.
