I learn from the mistakes but I lose it all during the lecture. Spencer sits me down in a seat like this is Sunday school and draws on a dry-erase board to the constant playback of the fight.
The fight.
Executioner at his prime, Sugar losing favor.
Spencer isn’t about to analyze what I looked like, or even how hard I worked leading up to the fight. No, he zeroes in on the omission.
Punches not thrown.
Punches not blocked.
This is what I did wrong, and I might have won the match but Spencer would still sit me down for an hour-long lecture. Clean KO or biggest loss, Spencer will still preach; he will show me where I went wrong.
“To start with, how many times have I said to land first attack?”
First attack meaning first jab, first impact—
Like it’s some kind of competition.
Wait a minute…
When isn’t it a form of competition?
When are we not fighting to better understand ourselves?
“I agree,” my go-to reply during post-fight analysis lecture holy-shit-how-long-is-this-going-to-take-please-blow-my-brains-out come on I understand, I understand. How is this helping?
We’re wasting time.
I should be training.
ROUND ONE
X hops forward, two-stepping around the ring taunting me.
I put my fists up.
SHELL
I play it defensively.
I do not land the first punch.
First punch is a jab.
JAB
X leads jab, jab, jab, jab, all of them absorbed. They aren’t landing clean, but tell that to the audience, the CompuBox fuckers, the crooked judges that want me out of the picture. This league needs the new and improved. I do a poor representation of myself. They want a Willem that reminds them not of the times but of the timeless. They want my prime performance.
They want to forget that we are all aging, squirming in our shells.
Try and forget that as you age so too does your personality.
You are not the same person you were when you walked into this fight.
This is what they really want.
I land my first.
JAB
Round one starts slow, feeling out X, waiting for his strategy to present itself. I know it can only be one of four possible plans. When I was his age, I didn’t have a whole lot of patience. I had to outbox everyone.
Spencer scowls, “What is this passive bullshit?”
And:
“That’s not you!”
Actually, it is.
Who else would I be?
JAB
ATTEMPTED HOOK TO THE BODY
Not my best. I lead with the right not quite sure of what I’m thinking. It’s because X had me down for the ten count long before this fight. I had psyched myself out of the dance long before sole met canvas.
Spencer cups his hands, “My god, why didn’t you block any of those jabs?”
JAB
JAB
JAB
JAB
STRAIGHT TO THE CHIN
I didn’t see them coming.
But don’t tell him that.
“I was buying an opportunity.”
My excuse.
Spencer rubs his eyes, “You can’t afford to do that any more, you understand?”
Again, this time louder, writing on the dry-erase board:
CONSERVATIVE
BOXER-PUNCHER
“This is what you need to be!”
He circles it once, twice…four, five times.
“This is what you need to be!”
Louder this time.
Back to the fight.
Round two is about to start.
ROUND TWO
As he said, round two is where I got it all wrong and I’ll admit that it’s true.
“My fucking god, what the hell were you thinking?!”
Spencer is starting to sweat. I played right into X’s plan and what hurts the most is that I came up with this tactic. It’s mine, all mine, and yet he uses it and worst of all, I let it happen. I fell into line and blocked the jabs.
BLOCK
SUDDEN IMPACT
Problem is the jabs were ploys for the cutting shot right to the body.
He lands three well-formed punches, all of them straight shots, to the body where I hadn’t been prepared to take a three-punch flurry.
I narrowly block the uppercut X continued to use throughout the fight. The uppercut that would eventually end the fight in round eight, sending me to the ground where for a brief moment I lost sight of where I was and all I wanted to do was sleep. Take a nap. The ring might as well have been a queen-sized bed.
I was out cold.
But round two, I was a little more active.
JAB
JAB
STRAIGHT
JAB
STRAIGHT
JAB
JAB
STRAIGHT
BLOCK
DUCK
TO THE BODY
JAB
JAB
HOLD
“Why are you holding?”
Spencer widens his eyes, “Explain that to me because I’m dumbfounded.”
“Explain why…”
“Why would you hold? You should have used the goddamn left hook!”
I watch the footage. I avoid scrutiny with a yawn.
“If you weren’t that lax in the ring, you might have won this!”
Another combination, attempted, alongside with notice of which punches actually landed:
JAB (miss)
JAB (miss)
HOOK TO BODY (miss)
HOOK TO THE FACE (miss)
BACKPEDAL (to avoid X’s own jab)
BLOCK (wait for it)
JAB OUT OF POSITION (fight out of it)
JAB (miss)
JAB (impact)
STRAIGHT TO FACE (impact)
I tell Spencer, “That wasn’t so bad, right?”
He watches, silent for a moment, as X follows it up with a combination that turns into the first flurry that stuns me. I am able to fight out of it, holding once or twice, not that anyone noticed.
Spencer sighs.
Except for Spencer.
“It’s bad.”
Solemnly, he returns to the dry-erase board and writes down a phrase to be further explored later, “Footwork & energy management.”
I think my footwork is fine.
Not that I say anything.
Round three is about to start.
ROUND THREE
I do better this round but what the audience doesn’t realize is that it’s not because I stunned X or even managed to hurt him.
It’s because he took the round off. I should have identified that he was merely resting, saving it up (much to his dismay, because I know how little patience I have for that kind of thing) in order to send me down to the canvas in round four, five, and for good in round eight.
Spencer writes on the dry-erase board, “Round management.”
Management.
He might as well just write that on the board and save some time.
Manage this old, confused fighter. Help me figure out why the moment I step into the ring, I feel gassed, completely absent, detached from my body.
Seeing this should make me feel better. I land a classic combination, not that it does anything to X. He takes it in stride, trading shots with me until I reach out and clinch, because truth is I’m winded, I’m hurt, I’m tired, and most of all, I’m confused.
The combination:
JAB
JAB
NOTICE AN OPENING TO THE BODY
JAB TO BODY
HOOK TO LEFT SIDE OF FACE
HOOK TO BODY
STRAIGHT
STRAIGHT
JAB
SHORT CROSS TO THE BODY
LEFT POWER SHOT (MY BEST)
I give him my best combination, finishing it off with a clean power shot to the body, something that should have at least registered but X, as I had said earlier, follows up with a combination of his own.
I shut my eyes, not wanting to see it.
I hear Spencer breathing heavily, “Unacceptable! You are falling into your own traps!”
I am.
Yes.
I know that I am.
How can I avoid the past’s snares and spikes if I forget where I had left them, and moreover, what can you do if every time I look in the mirror I see someone new, someone older, someone that I’m not at all familiar with?