(AKA Nick Gets His Ass Kicked) By Nick The dumbest thing anyone can ever say, right after, "Yes, I'd like to drink the Kool-Aid, Mr. Cult Leader" is "This isn't the way this was supposed to happen!" yet that is exactly what I said to myself after my last amateur boxing match. Along with wrestling, judo, jiu-jitsu, and a brief and very lame stint with shotokan, I boxed when I was in college. I lost my first boxing match ever to a good friend of mine by split decision. I pounded his body and he pounded my head. I thought I won and he thought he won - the truth of the matter is that we both sucked. We would eventually get a lot better, but would still, in the big picture of things, suck at boxing. As I had always done after losing at ANYTHING, I killed myself to get better - I'd work with anyone who would teach me and I did more cardio than any human being should have done. My hard work paid off and over the next few years, I rattled off 14 consecutive victories. Now, I don't want to overstate the quality of my record. This wasn’t the highest level of competition and they weren't always the prettiest fights. I am more of a "kill the target" kind of guy than a dancer - the concept of head movement or even lateral movement is completely lost on me - but they were wins. My career was coming to a close as I was about to embark into the world as a newly minted 2LT and I had one fight left before I had to hang up the gloves. The guy I was facing was tall and skinny and a little baby-faced. I knew I was going to absolutely destroy him. The bell rang. I went out and charged the target, leading with a big right cross. His head barely moved as my hand slid right past his face. I was hit three times before my arm had returned to my face. I swung and missed badly. He hit me three times in rapid succession. I swung and missed again. He beat me senseless. Turns out, this kid had a very successful Golden Gloves career prior to the military, and I had just signed up for a lesson as a punching bag in the Hey-Kids-Come-and-Check-Out-What-a-Real-Boxer-Looks-Like Clinic. With my friends watching, I was beaten like a drum. I'm not sure I hit him in the first round. In the second round, he got me up against the ropes and unleashed hell on my body and face. He rocked me with one straight right so hard that I bounced back into the ropes. While I haven't been blessed with good looks, I did receive a solid chin, and I used the momentum from my bounce to hit him with the hardest right hand I had. I split his lip. He smiled. Fuck. "Nice shot," he muffled through the mouth guard. He reached out to touch gloves with me. It occurred to me that he was basically sparring and didn’t even consider me a fight. After the glove touching, he whaled on me like I had stolen his MRE peanut butter at Ranger School. I seriously got hit like 1734 times in the last minute of that round. I returned to my corner. My coach looked me in the eye with grave concern. "You've got this guy" he half said and half asked. "Yeah" I tried to convince myself. This was the first time in my boxing career that I felt hurt and the first time my head had the "fuzzies". "Seconds out!" the ref shouted. I turned to face him. He looked chill - still bouncing on his feet. My hands were heavy. My legs felt like they were cemented to the ground. I already had the post fight headache and the fucking fight wasn't over. The bell rang. "Leave it all out there!" his coach shouted. Apparently, his previous efforts were not "all out" ones, because he was a different fighter in the last round. I am not exaggerating when I say I had no idea where his hands were coming from. I was in Crazyland. Then something happened. I forgot I was in a boxing match. I'm not kidding. This sonofabitch hit me so many times that my "thinking mind" shut down and I became an animal. This was true fight or flight mode. The crowd disappeared. The shouts disappeared. I was going to die if I didn’t do something. I charged him. He threw a monster right that might have knocked me out. Luckily, I had just shot a double leg takedown. I wrapped his legs up tight and stood with him, like I had so many times when I was, you know, WRESTLING, and slammed him hard into the mat. He made a pathetic whimpering noise when I slammed him, and I easily passed his legs and achieved the mount. I was about to punch this man to death when I was form tackled off him by the referee. I finished my career 14-2. I may or may not have had a concussion. As I trudged over to my corner, my coach, a lifelong boxer, was horrified. He believed strongly in the sweet science and couldn’t find the words to appropriately decry my transgression. However, my NCOIC, SFC Kickass, was laughing his balls off. "CDT P, that was fucking awesome! Nice fucking work!" "SFC Kickass, I just took him down in a BOXING MATCH. I got disqualified!" I shouted, more embarrassed than anything. "But you didn’t lose!" he said. "Of course, I did!" I said. "I got disqualified!" "At the end of that fight, who was on top? Who was ready to rain down the death blow?" "I was SFC Kickass," I said, "but it was against the rules!" "CDT P, lemme ask you something. You gonna be a pro-boxer when you graduate this fucking place?" "No, SFC Kickass. Especially after that shitty performance" I said, feeling sorry for myself. "What are you gonna do?" he asked. "I'm gonna be an infantryman," I responded meekly. "That's fucking right, brother. You're gonna be a fucking trigger puller like me, and you're gonna have guys that trust you, and they aren't going to care how you beat the enemy, but they sure as shit are going to expect you to beat him." "SFC Kickass, I cheated." "CDT P, first of all, you and I both know you didn't mean it. You were all kinds of fucked up - you're fucking eyes were glazed over after the first round. Second, who gives a fuck - there's no cheatin' in combat and you're a combat fucking leader. The enemy isn't going to play by the rules, and you can’t either." I thought about it. I was still pissed I had gotten my ass kicked, but I felt a little better. I didn't like the fact that I technically had cheated, but I was happy that my body kept moving forward for the win, even if my mind couldn't anymore. SFC Kickass reminded me once again how much I loved NCOs. A good NCO always brings it back to what's important and keeps his guys moving, even when they do fuck up. And no amount of NCO support was going to convince me that assaulting a guy with MMA during a boxing match was anything less than a solid fuckup. My opponent walked over. "Sorry man," I said before he even opened his mouth. "Best double leg takedown I've ever seen...in a boxing match", he smiled, and patted me on the back. The next day, SFC Kickass stopped by. "I just wanted to make sure you understood me yesterday - I'm not saying you shouldn't follow the Geneva Convention and rule of war and shit - just that when you're in combat, you do what you have to. You got me?" he asked. I was puzzled. "Yeah, Roger sergeant" I said, "I would never like...kill innocent civilians and shit. I understood what you meant. The enemy isn't going to do what I expect him to or what I think is fair and I have to be ready to do the same or I am going to fail my guys, right?" He smiled. "Right, CDT P. That's right. So no war crimes, right?" he asked grinning. "No war crimes, sergeant." I smirked. He walked out. A good NCO brings it back to what’s important and keeps his guys moving. A great NCO that lasts more than a day in the Army covers his ass from jackasses that are dumb enough to shoot a double leg takedown in a boxing match. |
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