A number of writers, much better versed than myself on the subject, suggest that one take a day of rest for every mile run in a long distance race. According to this advice, I should avoid strenuous exercise until roughly mid-November in order to let myself recover from the Chicago Marathon. But I'm loathe to trust "experts." It wasn't that long ago that authors of esteemed medical textbooks suggested bleeding people to cure headaches, and not in the too distant past that music critics gave Hootie and the Blowfish a Grammy for best new band.
So I eschewed the advice of the experts, and went to the boxing gym last night.
The damage isn't that bad -- a split lip, an aching Achilles's tendon, and various and sundry bruises on my ribs. The old nose is a bit sensitive to the touch, too. I have to say, however, that being back in the ring made me realize how much I love the sport, and how much more alive I feel with a pair of fourteen ounce gloves firmly encasing my fists.
It's hard to describe what makes one love a sport like boxing, where it is guaranteed that both participants will both dole out and take in serious amounts of pain in the course of a few two-minute rounds. I was trying to explain this to Katie the other night, and found myself at a loss for words. Now that I've had a few days to think it over, though, I'm going to give it another try.
The first thing to keep in mind is how little most of the commentators actually know about the sport. Joyce Carol Oates, who I'm quite sure has never set foot within the twenty by twenty confines of a ring, attempts to read male aggression into the sport and views it as a paradigm for larger issues in society. Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway tried to infuse the sport with some sense of self-proving necessary to achieve manhood. I think that all three of these writers, when it comes to boxing, at least, don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about. Even putting aside the fact that the prevalence of modern-day women boxers bely the arguments about masculinity, what the aforementioned authors miss out is that at the end of the day, a match is just a fight. Sure, it's got a few rules and regulations, but ultimately, it's just two guys in an enclosed area trying to hurt each other.
Even that last sentence of mine is a bit misleading. Boxers don't necessarilly get joy from hurting each other. Any of us worth our salt has enough confidence in our fighting ability that we don't need to prove it to anyone. I'd be willing to bet my next paycheck that boxers get into less fights than the average human being -- after all, if you know that you can beat someone up, it's a lot easier to walk away from a fight without losing any pride.
So boxing isn't about the infliction of pain; in all honesty, I think it's about the contrary. A fight, between two good boxers, is about the absortion and enduring of pain -- it's a confessional on canvas, where one can confess all sins, real and imagined, to the catharsis of a right cross or hook to the body. Martin Scorcese and George Plimpton understood this. No matter how much you wrong yourself or others, once you step inside the ring, you know that you will serve penance of some sort. It's a quasi-religious feeling, and I think that this idea goes a lot toward explaining why most boxers feel their calmest while fighting. I admit, it's a fucked up way to deal with things. But then again, so are most institutions and rites which offer any sort of meaningful forgiveness.
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