Boxing Lessons
School or Be Schooled
I’ve always been one of those people that things come fast
and easy to. Learned to read when I was three, graduated with
honors from one of the top public ivies, at age 20, qualified
for the Boston Marathon my first try. So I’ve lived my life
in constant search for the next challenge, the next obstacle to
conquer. I found that and then some when I took up boxing.
It’s a long story as to how I got to boxing – a journey
involving giving an ex-boyfriend a bloody nose in a bar, getting
my ass whupped on a public bus in San Francisco, and eventually
learning the craft alongside the hard-bodied Olympic team of the
small forgotten West African nation of Guinea (read story here.)
But I’ll fast-forward all that to 2006, the year I resettled
in DC to start graduate school. I was delighted to find a ring
right down the street from me, a modest place marked by a little
yellow and black sign, with grilled windows and doors you have
to peer through to get a glimpse of the action. True grit, no
attitude – this was the real deal. The ring is owned by
an ex-black panther, the first to have put gloves on Sugar Ray
Leonard’s hands back in the day. Gene is a spiritual man
who had chosen for his logo scales with books on one side and
boxing gloves on the other – a depiction of the balance
of brain and brawn I felt I personified.
At first I was a bit shy, feeling I had to prove myself to the
ruff-n-tuff guys who trained there, to get them to accept me as
a true equal and not just a cute white girl with nice calves.
I had harbored secret fantasies of getting in the ring for real
and seeing if I really had what it took. I sparred with the dudes,
even knocking one kid down so hard he never came back. The only
chick there was a 16 year-old girl 10 pounds and 3 inches smaller
than me, a southpaw whom I easily dominated. When I would hit
the pads with my trainer, who had programmed me to be the bullfighter
‘cause the “bull was coming,” he would say,
“The pads don’t lie. I wish I could get the dudes
to hit as hard and fast as you do.”
So having gotten an ego puffing from my trainers and beating up
a few minors, when the chance came up to box in a prelim match
to the Golden Gloves (the premier amateur boxing tournament),
I jumped. I had nothing to lose, besides perhaps my pride and
good looks, I thought. I met my match a few hours before the bout.
It was her first fight too, young girl, glasses, a little thugy
looking but sweet. “Just don’t knock me out,”
she joked as we waited to strip down to our skivvies for the weigh-in.
I was all butterflies, but still tried to remind myself this was
just a sport, and we were just athletes. My trainer, who at age
73 had been around this block a few times, had promised me he
would never put me in to something I wasn’t ready for, and
I trusted his judgment 100%.
I started getting ready in the bathroom, leisurely putting on
my flimsy chest protector, thinking I had several matches to go
before ours. Suddenly I heard the emcee call out “Keisha
Johnson, April Thompson, please report to the glove table.”
Shit, I didn’t even have my hands wrapped, hadn’t
even taken off my earrings. I threw my things on and came out
of the bathroom to see my opponent transformed. She was already
warming up on the pads and I wasn’t together. Now in gear,
I could see her name tattooed on a bicep better chiseled than
half the dudes in our gym. When they called us up to the ring,
I realized I didn’t even have my mouthpiece in and had to
run back for it. “You’ll need that,” somebody
heckled from the audience, shaking my confidence.
So I barely had my thoughts together when the bell marking the
first round rang. She came out at me like a rhino, catching me
off balance. The beautifully orchestrated matador routine went
right out the window. I tripped and went down of my own accord.
She was standing waiting over me when I got back up (the ref should
have sent her to a neutral corner), but I came back up swinging.
She hit hard as hell but I was throwing back with all I had.
Suddenly the ref stops the fight, shaking his head and waving
his hands in the four directions where the judges sat to call
it off. We’re all totally shocked, even my opponent. My
trainer starts yelling at the ref, taking him to task for the
bad call using words I had never heard the sweet old man use before.
Sugar Ray’s brother even came up to me afterwards and told
me I got a raw deal. A look at the tape later on, where I realized
the TKO had occurred less than a minute into the first round,
showed that I was actually throwing a punch at the exact moment
the ref stopped the fight on my behalf.
So I got a raw deal, it’s part of cutting your teeth as
a boxer to get a bad call. Plus it was my first fight, everybody
gets nervous. “If you went three rounds with her, that’d
been a totally different fight. You got superior conditioning
and footwork – she’d a been huffin and puffin by the
second round.” my trainer told me. “did you see her
weigh in? I’m sure she didn’t even make weight- she
was way bigger than you. Let her fight someone her own size.”
It’s three months later. A new tournament, the Capitol Gloves,
to try to revive the sweet science of amateur boxing here in the
nation’s capitol. It was ridiculously disorganized –
they were still putting up the ring in the Armory when the show
was supposed to have started – and at the weigh-in there
weren’t any other chicks but some scrawny underage straw-weights
(at 116 and 34, I was a bantamweight, and could only box people
18 and older – though for their protection or mine, I wasn’t
sure). It looked like only one of my three teammates who signed
up would actually have a match. I relaxed and got ready for the
one-ring circus that these amateur bouts were. Then suddenly Gene
comes back and says, “you gonna fight that girl you fought
out at sugar ray’s. We gonna get her this time.”
It seemed odd she wasn’t there for the weigh in. probably
didn’t even make weight, but I’d beat her ass anyway.
Who wins the bullfight? Not the bull…. I’d been training
hard, I was shape, knew what I had done wrong the last time around.
Paybacks were hell: I was going to vindicate myself.
We get called to the ring. She had new hot pink gloves with matching
trunks with “baby girl” written on the waistband.
She was full of confidence, doing her little dance around the
ring. I’d go in there with simple dignity and show her ass
up – show the world the white girls can scrap with the best
and worst of em.
Bell rings, stomach lurches. We meet in the center of the ring.
I again throw my beautifully orchestrated matador routine out
the window to try and go toe to toe with the bulldog. Eight seconds
into the first round – I drop my hands to go to her body
and she lands a left and right hook to the face, sending me to
the canvas, adding a third hook as I’m on the way down.
Eight seconds.
It’s the hardest I’ve ever been hit. I see white pricks
of light. Someone helps me up. They ask me my name. They ask me
the date. They take off my gloves and lift her arm in the air,
handing us both trophies. I cried from the shame of losing. Then
cried from the shame of crying. It hurt to move my jaw and I had
a headache that I suspected was a sign of brain damage. But mainly
I felt the humiliation of complete defeat.
A year later, you can still find me at Midtown most any night
of the week, shadowboxing an invisible opponent, a tattooed girl
with pretty pink gloves, in the tiny little ring with duct-taped
ropes. I haven’t really gotten the least bit better since
the last fight, and my record will probably forever stand still
at a dismal oh and two.
So that cocky little girl saved this cocky little girl from an
otherwise incurable case of egomania and hubris. The girl who
had always excelled at everything she tried had found something
she sucked at. I had probably never tried so hard, put so much
effort into something, and yet failed so miserably. And let me
tell you, there is nothing more humiliating than getting your
ass beat in public. So as much as I despise her, I owe baby girl
for having schooled me in the art of losing.
Mz. April Showers, ready to rain punches down on her foolish opponents.
