Some nights you get in there and feel your legs weighing fifty pounds each even though you made the welterweight limit at one-four-seven without sweating yourself out the day before. That’s how it was in Vegas when I fought this big bull-necked Mexican dude who broke my nose and shut my eye before I realized he had no punch.
They got theories on why you feel all of a sudden like your legs are in quick-sand. Fear, over-training, dehydration, and other things they talk about when you got no zip in your legs. I say this guy couldn’t punch on account of he just heaved his fists at you like he was throwing a bowling ball. He was clumsy as hell but you couldn’t get the son-of-a-bitch off of you. I’m a guy that likes to use the whole ring and not stand toe-to-toe trading bombs. But before the bell clanged to end the first I knew this fight was going down at close quarters.
There were nine goddamned rounds to go and I already felt like I fought six guys. So the next round I figure to fight my own way in the middle of the ring. I’m on my toes throwing combinations faster and prettier than Sugar Ray fucking-Robinson only this big dumb bastard don’t give a shit because his head is made of tungsten steel. A guy like him, he’s got scar tissue on his eyeballs and looks like he’d kill a house full of people just because they’re home. You hit him in the head enough and something will break all right, that’s every bone in your hand.
So Louie is telling me “go to the body” and by the fifth round he tells me it’s even-up. I can still win this thing if I got balls and use my head instead of letting this guy kick the shit out of me in there. I’m thinking Louie hadn’t been hit all night and it was easy for him to talk. But I also know he fought two decades, all those fights in Madison Square Garden and those title fights against Kid This-and-That. They get my nose and eye to stop bleeding and I’m thinking, fuck it, I’ll do what Louie says. I still feel like I got these cement shoes on so I ain’t going to be dancing tonight.
Six comes and this guy’s head don’t even exist any more as far as I care, except as something to grab when he gets too close. I’m looking at his steel-belted radial gut and digging hooks right in his solar-plexus. Getting hit there hurts like a mother-fucker no matter how good a shape you’re in.
What I said earlier, that this dude don’t have no punch. I stand by that. A guy that really can whack can take your ass out in the late rounds just as likely as the first, because his shots still have the snap, the crackle and pop. If not for my legs going out on me, this guy was nothing from seven on. If you ever had one of those dreams where you see a car coming to run you over, but you can’t move out of the way, then you know what I’m talking about. He was hitting me on top of my head, which it ain’t bragging for me to say is pretty damned hard, because I had my chin glued on my chest. That’s the best you can do when you’re too slow to get out of the way.
So Louie’s pissed because I’m doing just what he says and still getting beat. I know what he’s thinking. It’s like, just out of contrariness, I would do what he says and then on-purpose go lose the fight just to make him look bad. Guys in the fight game are funny that way. Splat. Splat. That’s how his punches sound when they land, and so the crowd thinks it’s really something. But these shots I’m digging in under his ribs hurt a lot more and he’s starting to breath heavy and hold his arms down to protect his ribs.
One thing about them bull-necked sons-a-bitches with granite chins is that when they start sucking wind from body-shots you can knock them out just like any other guy. He keeps walking in to me because he only has one gear and that’s forward.
So in nine everything I throw is landing and making his eyes roll back and he gets this dead look on his face. I seen dead men standing in the ring taking head shots. They’re dead only their legs don’t know it yet. Like I said I’m not much of a banger but I’m teeing off with hooks and right crosses and I swear to God I thought I would kill him right there in the ring, but the referee jumps in and raises my hand. I’m the winner, technical knockout.
Funny thing happened after the fight. The Mexican is okay only it turns out he ain’t Mexican at all. He calls himself an Argentine, being as how he’s from Argentina, that country Madonna sang about. And he’s got this high-brow attitude on account of he’s a banker in his fatherland, as he calls it, down near Rio de Janeiro.
I go in to tell him he fought a helluva a fight and he gives me the brush. Turns out he’s from this rich family, that ain’t too happy about him being a fighter. But he makes good dough so they have to put up with it. So anyway he don’t associate with fighters, gave me a total snub. Go figure.
