|
|
|
|
Nuts and extreme violence
26 Sep 2008 12:00AM
The fight isn’t happening! The promoter in question deserves a medal for his efforts to arrange one, but it all came to nothing unfortunately. On Wednesday morning I was beginning to get impatient about not having a match up and was thinking of asking Pep to pull the plug on fighting at all. But we waited… and waited… and waited. Till Thursday when all of a sudden a match up appeared on the horizon Lawrence of Arabia style (anyone who has seen that scene will know what I mean if I use the word painstaking). Eventually an opponent was named and I did the inevitable 10 minutes of thinking logically about it before texting Pep to say ‘sod it lets do it’. Pep turned up at training with a grin, “I knew you say that” he gloated.
So it was on! I got that now familiar adrenaline buzz thinking about the fight and immediately began plotting and scheming about how exactly I was going to beat him. This planning was all pretty academic, as off the back of the emotional rollercoaster of a week I’ve been having, there was only one tactic that was ever going to be employed. Caveman beatdown. Pure unadulterated, primal, nasty, foaming at the mouth extreme violence! Therein lays a contradiction as despite how I sometimes seem to fight and spar I like to think I apply cold logic combined with controlled aggression in the ring. But I couldn’t control the desire to go nuts.
By Thursday evening I had a seriously itchy trigger finger and desperately wanted to get stuck into some wrestling, but with a fight looming I had a light warm up, stretch and little else. I watched. I twitched. I gurned. I handed out dicey coaching points. I have never wanted to train as badly as I did that night. “But...” I consoled myself with “I can use this energy and aggression on Saturday night!”
Then the fateful phone call. We all needed to know exactly what was what for the fight and Pep rang the promoter. What weight exactly did I need to be? Actually under 83kg or was there an allowance? (I’m bang on 84kg at the moment). What were the weigh in times? Friday or Saturday? What was the purse? While these may seem mundane and rather inconsequential in a normal build up to a fight we had less than 48 hours to get everything organised. It didn’t matter, the fight was off. Bugger. The promoter was very apologetic, but had been let down by the opposition.
At work today I felt fine, very calm, very happy and enthusiastic. I work with kids with behavioural problems and love getting them excited about exercise and sport and challenging themselves. I try and show the kids how they can use sport as an outlet for their aggression, a way of ‘steam valving’ and using aggression positively. One lad in particular, we’ll call him ‘A’, is having a hard time at the moment and I took some time out at the end of the day to go in the gym to do some training with him. He loves it. He runs, jumps, presses, punches, rows, throws and so on till he collapses. It settles and calms him and gives him a focus and some respite from his problems if only for a short while. Anyway, today I set up a very simple circuit where we could work at the same time and I could push and encourage him. I don’t stand and shout during these sessions I join in. On the last lap we finished with me on the rowing machine and him doing step ups, both going flat out, really hell for leather. When the timer buzzed for us to stop I noticed ‘A’ had already stopped and was staring at me shaking his head.
“F***ing hell sir, you’re nuts.”
We’ve all got behavioural problems. Some people just deal with them better than others.
|
|
|
|