A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting (5 page)

I turned it over in my mind. I was a long way from junior high. I was a lot stronger, and I was a better fighter than I’d been an offensive tackle. I was never going to be here again, and I had invested so much. To not fight would be to miss an unrepeatable opportunity. And somehow I couldn’t see losing; I just couldn’t imagine it.

When I went downstairs for the afternoon session, I told Bippo, “I don’t care who he is, I’m going to kick his ass,” and Bippo smiled—he understood that braggadocio is part of gearing up for a fight. He understood, but he still thought I was in trouble.

On the last day before the fight, resting in my room, I took a picture of my stuff hanging on the wall: my mongkol, my warm-up gear, my towel. Kum had made the mongkol out of thick red plastic string. I had reassured my mom via e-mail that it was blessed by Buddhist monks and would protect me. In a funny way, I was growing calmer.

We drove down to Samrong, which was about twenty minutes away, and I could tell Anthony was nervous. Traffic was bad, and if it continued like this, we might not have enough time to prep. I stared out the window, watched the cars, and waited. Everything I could do was done. I was surprised at how relaxed I felt. I even found myself smiling.

We got to Samrong with time to spare, and I met Bippo on the way in. I nodded hello but kept my head down. I didn’t really want to look at anybody I knew.

I saw my opponent when I walked in the door of the stadium. I was taller than he was, and although he was as wide as a tree, height made a difference. He had a broad, pleasant face, and glasses, and his hair was cropped short. He was wearing karate
gi
pants and a T-shirt and his heavy forearms were covered in tattoos. We shook hands, smiling, and talked through our promoters. We nodded at each other, agreeing that this was a friendly match and we were not there to kill each other. Yeah, right, I thought. I may have been uninitiated, but I wasn’t stupid. This was a fight, not a sparring session, and he was going to try to hurt me. I knew I was supposed to be intimidated by him, but I was also aware that he wasn’t as cool as he pretended to be. Showing up in my Fairtex warm-up suit and being big and tall, I looked a lot more professional than I was.

National Geographic was there to film a Westerner having his first muay Thai fight, part of a documentary they were doing on the sport, but it was easy to ignore them. I sat down in the stands, paranoid about wasting energy; I knew that I would need absolutely everything. Yaquit taped up my hands. Finally, it was me getting my hands taped—tape was different than the wraps, tighter, stronger, permanent. My opponent was walking around, a towel around his neck and both hands on it. He was big and burly, but, I reminded myself, thirty-eight years old. He should really sit down.

Yaquit and I moved to the tables, and I lay down and got the hotoil massage. It tingled and then stung. We didn’t talk much. Johann and Bippo and a few other
farang
stood around, nervous. I had a new roommate at Fairtex, a giant Swede named Blue, who was one of my cornermen and probably more nervous than I was. Blue was about as unsuitable for muay Thai as one could be, but he loved the sport and the training. He was a Fairtex lifer: He’d been there for twelve months some time ago, and when I was there, he was planning on staying for another year. He was seriously overweight—I would put him around 250—though the weight was sloughing off him in the heat. He was primarily there to lose weight; the first time he’d come to Fairtex he’d lost more than fifty pounds. Blue was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, without a mean bone in his body. The Thais loved him, both for his gentle demeanor and for his persistence in the face of his physicality.

You had to give Blue credit. He wasn’t there to fight, and he didn’t have much form, but he tried. There was a trainer for the Lumpini fighters who in all my time there never spoke to me or looked at me once; he didn’t have any time for or interest in the silly
farang.
But he would talk to Blue. Blue had won them over by nearly killing himself training, by a show of heart. Now, at my fight, he had his hair carefully styled and looked nervous as hell.

“Sam, you warm,” Yaquit said, as I climbed to my feet and began to shadowbox, staring at the floor. There are two schools of thought about where your eyes should be when fighting: You stare at your opponent’s eyes and let your peripheral vision cover his body like a membrane, or you stare at your opponent’s midsection. I was of the latter school. The eyes are for mind games, and intimidation, and distractions, and tricks. I don’t do any of those things. I just want to hit, to get through and make good connections, to be there in front of the other fighter and to find a way through him. I don’t care about him one way or the other; I don’t know him.

There was a commotion where my opponent was warming up. He’d drawn a crowd, but I ignored it. I later found out that he was putting on a real show, dropping ax-kicks and flat-punching the brick walls. He’d also taken off his shirt and pants to reveal a body covered in deep, serious tattoos—demons and snakes and fish. The Thais loved it and were screaming, “
Yakuza!
” Traditionally, a member of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, has tattoos covering his entire body, except on his face, neck, and hands. Another Yakuza tradition is to cut off a finger to show regret if you disappoint your boss. I can’t prove that my opponent was Yakuza, but he was sporting about five thousand dollars’ worth of tattoos and he did show up with four or five burly Japanese guys (of course, they could have been friends from his gym or dojo). I learned later that he was missing half of his left pinkie. Maybe he wasn’t Yakuza, but the Thais certainly thought so.

I put on my cup and fight shorts and went over and got my gloves. Yaquit tied them on. The gloves weighed ten ounces each and felt like nothing. At Harvard and Fairtex, I had used regular boxing gloves, the sixteen-ouncers, so I couldn’t believe these things. Once a fighter puts on those lobster claws, he’s good for only one thing.

Yaquit spoke to me very intensely. “Sam, elbow,” he said, making an elbowing gesture. I could see he was worried. From the way everyone avoided my eyes, I was getting the sense that they were concerned for me.

Then it was time to go.

I step into the ring, and stand facing my corner, hands on the ropes, waiting for the music to start the
wai khru.
My pulse begins to race. I avoid looking at my opponent. Finally, I am really nervous.

The music comes up, and we begin our walk. I move around the ring counterclockwise, with my inside fist up and outside fist on the top rope. This is a way to learn the ring, to feel it. I bow and say a prayer in each corner, ostensibly to placate the spirits of the corners. I read somewhere that the way to win a fight is to take control of one corner, and then another, until finally you control the whole ring. So I mutter to each corner as I stop and bow my head, “This is my corner.”

Then the
wai khru
begins. I learned Apidej’s
wai khru,
as is proper. I walk in small spiraling circles into the center of the ring and carefully get down on my knees, kowtowing toward my own corner, my back to my opponent’s corner. The
wai khru
is the time to think about your parents, your family, and your trainer. I do, and it works. It centers me, reminding me of why I am here and who I am.

I sit up and bow three times, swinging my arms wide and curling them up to my face as I arch back. And then a slow climb to the feet, the
ram muay,
turning and stepping lightly, deliberately, dancing to the beat like it’s an Indian rain dance. I stare at the ground, intent on learning every square inch of the canvas, of knowing the dimensions of the ring. It’s all mine.

The music ends. I bow to my corner and go over to Yaquit. He removes my mongkol and says something in Thai—which I don’t understand and doesn’t concern me—and crosses himself; he’s Catholic. Later I found out he had said, “Sam, have a cool heart.”

I go back to the center and touch gloves with my opponent. He is trying to glare me down. I’m not interested in a staring contest. The referee holds both our gloves and says something in Thai, warning us. We both nod, even though neither of us understands him.

I return to my corner and the bell rings. The pipes trill, and we come together. I have my game plan and I’m not going to deviate from it:
Take it easy the first round, kick low and hard at his legs, and feel him out. Nobody kicks high until the third round. Don’t clinch.

I kick him first, a low right-leg kick, and a few seconds later land a weak left-leg kick. I fight traditional, or orthodox, stance, which, like boxing, leads with the left, so my stronger kicks are right-leg kicks. The lead-leg kicks require a quick shuffle step that telegraphs. My opponent comes back with a heavy, strong leg kick. He is a southpaw, a lefty, so he uses his right hand to jab and his left to power punch. He begins alternating between leading with his left and leading with his right, a very karate thing to do, to try to confuse your opponent. His stance is shallow, though, and his shoulders are nearly parallel with mine, so it doesn’t make much difference; the angle and speed of his blows don’t change much whether he is leading left or right. After a few more punches, he throws a heavy kick to my right side, low, just above the waist, and I think,
Hey, maybe I can kick to the body too.

I’m not really thinking out there; I’m just trying to stay with him, stay in his face. There are moments when the ref is yelling, “Pick it up, Red!”—referring to my red trunks—which kind of throws me, as my world has shrunk to my opposition and nothing exists or makes sense outside of our intense dialogue of punches and kicks. I just want to keep up my end of the conversation.

My opponent keeps landing heavy kicks on my lead leg, on the outside of my left knee. They don’t really hurt, but I know that it’s not good for me. For some reason, I can’t block them shin on shin.

Suddenly I’m on my ass, scrambling to get to my feet. I can’t tell if it was a punch or kick that put me down, I think probably a kick. I just want to get up, to get on with it, to get back in front of him. I don’t even take my standing eight count to catch my breath, which surprises my opponent a little; he’s already walked over to his corner. He comes back warily and we touch gloves. He should jump all over me, but he doesn’t, so I take those few seconds of rest. Then I start punching, and he stumbles and slips and goes down on his own.

I am exhausted, but I hear Blue calling through the haze, “He’s through! He’s through!” and I think,
Shit, Blue’s right. He’s all done.
I just have to keep on him, not let up, and he’ll run out of gas.

He keeps swinging for me, going for the big knockout punch, but I keep my hands up and he never lands one. I chase him around and he turns and grapples with me, and I hear someone yell, “Knee!” I throw a knee, just a little one. I feel it smush into his gut, into the softness underneath his rib cage, and to my astonishment he collapses, just goes straight down. The ref steps in and I stand over my opponent in amazement. Finally, I walk over to a neutral corner, unable to believe what is happening. I watch him try, still on one knee, to pick up his mouth guard, and I think,
Don’t get up, don’t get up.
Then the ref beckons me over, so I start back, squaring myself up, getting back onto my toes. The ref looks back at him, and he still isn’t really on his feet. He is doubled over and pawing weakly for his mouth guard, swaying unsteadily. The ref waves him out. First-round KO.

I was relieved, but I didn’t quite know what to do. I went down on one knee next to my opponent, who had collapsed again, touched his gloves, and said something like “Good fight,” and he nodded. He was fine, just a little winded. We walked over to his corner, and it didn’t seem like I was going to get a drink from his guys, so I went back into the middle of the ring and bowed to the judges and the crowd. It was a little anticlimactic. Usually after a fight the winner and loser will go arm in arm to both corners and have a drink of water from each trainer. I had been killing myself with Apidej for months to be ready for five rounds, and all I got was one?

I walked back over to my corner, and from the way Anthony hugged me and the expressions on his and Blue’s faces, I realized they had thought I was going to get creamed. But I still wasn’t ready to leave the ring. I wanted at least three rounds, just for the sake of experience. I couldn’t believe it had ended so quickly. Anthony brought Apidej over for the cameras and I tried to get down on my knees to bow to him, but he caught me and held me fast, laughing. It was my first fight and I got lucky, fighting an older out-of-shape guy. Apidej knew it wasn’t a big deal.

I ran into my opponent afterward, in the showers. I thought,
Oh shit,
because in here, on the slick tile floor, he could do some karate and really mess me up. But he was a perfect gentleman, polite from start to finish, and he shook my hand as he left the shower. I felt a little bad for him. He’d flown in from Tokyo just for this, but he hadn’t had enough time to acclimate and rest, and then he warmed up too much. He was definitely a better fighter than I was, but muay Thai is a young man’s game. Whoever is in better shape wins. It’s that simple.

I was lucky, but in a sense, so was he. I didn’t follow Yaquit’s advice and wade in throwing elbows; it might have turned into a bloodbath if I had, because I doubt my opponent would have been ready for those, either. And if the fight had gone into the later rounds, he wouldn’t have gotten any less tired.

Afterward, Blue, Anthony, Apidej, a few others, and I walked down the street to a little curbside restaurant and drank Elephant beer and ate salty snacks. I gradually became jubilant and thought I might never be tired again. Apidej told me a story that really stuck with me. He had been in a bar with a bunch of friends as a younger man, when he was the best fighter in Thailand, and a friend of his had become very drunk and tried to pick a fight. Apidej had just quietly gotten up and
wai
’d respectfully, and high, but his eyes deadly and calm behind his gesture, and backed out. The
wai
is the gesture of greeting respectfully and also for giving thanks, hands in prayer to the forehead, elbows out, a slight bow—I do it all the time because it engenders politeness. But when Apidej acted out for us the way he had done it, bowing before his aggressive friend, I could see in his eyes the pure and tranquil knowledge of victory. This is a guy who kicked so hard that if you blocked with your arm, he’d break it—and yet he had the utter control to not be baited. That’s what I admired, more than anything. Apidej is a devout Buddhist, and he meditated often, and I was curious about that. Something in that attitude seemed like the real warrior attitude, secure in self-knowledge, aware of things that don’t matter and untroubled by them.