Excuse me if this comes out strange, my head is still a bit fuzzy… 

Last week I gathered up Josh Chin (‘11), Kevin Anderson (‘11), and Ali Kershner (’11) and went to the East Palo Alto boxing club with absolutely no idea what to expect.  For those of you who haven’t stepped inside a boxing gym before, I think a simple phrase suffices to explain the aura of the place: friggin’ intimidating.  There’s nothing like stepping into a room full of athletes who spend their evenings training to beat the bejesus out of other people to give you a feeling of coziness inside.

We showed up without hand-wraps or gloves and did pretty well to make ourselves look like fools in front of the boxers and their head trainer, Johnnie Gray Jr.  Gray is the owner and founder of the club, a professional in his day who still looks like he can throw a mean right cross.  His second in command Fatima Alcantar, a young latina lady and an excellent boxer in her own right, helped us find our way and arranged for us to return in a few days, after getting ourselves some proper gear.

Fast forward to today, after a quick stop at Walmart of course.  Our group of four returned to the gym to find a similar situation as our first trip: a collection of hard-working boxers training on treadmills, punching bags, and weight machines with one impressive young fighter in the middle of the ring, firing rapid blasts into the outstretched punching mitts of Johnnie Gray.  “Who’s the champ?” Gray asked repeatedly as he kept the incessant rhythm with his hands. “I’m the champ,” responded the young fighter without ever interrupting his flurry of punches.  Still intimidating? Definitely.  But at least this time we had a vague familiarity with the place, albeit not where we might fit into it.

After re-introducing ourselves, this time to a young trainer named Ariana Faris, we were still oblivious as to where to start.  We did, however, see that the ring was currently unoccupied, a rarity at the club but something not nearly as uncommon as two completely inexperienced teenagers jumping into the ring without any training whatsoever.  So, naturally, that’s exactly what we did, and before we knew it, Josh and I were fully geared up and ready to fight.  We didn’t have much time in the ring—at least we thought we didn’t.  It turned out that four minutes of sloppy fighting, with the incessant and hilarious commentary of Johnnie Gray throughout, was plenty of time for us to kill some brain cells and exhaust ourselves, not to mention make it abundantly clear to all our spectators how little we knew about boxing.  We both left the ring with ringing ears and I was lucky enough to be the recipient of some painful gut shots, but as I cleaned myself up and came back to reality, I understood an immense lot more about boxing than I ever could have before.

I’ve never been much of a fighter myself (an early dropout from Karate class) but nonetheless, I’ve always been fascinated by boxing.  I’ve seen most of the famous fights and I try to catch as much of Manny Pacquiao as HBO will let me.  But as much as I appreciated the art, (and make no mistake, boxing at its best is truly art in motion) without having stepped in the ring myself, it was impossible to fathom either the physical endurance or the mental toughness that is requisite in a good fighter.  In no other sport is the competition so basic and the setting so intense.  For the two boxers in the ring, the battle is as much against themselves and the “Fight or Flight” mechanisms of their own brain as their opponent.  Throw in a handful of jarring blows to the head and the task of maintaining their focus and remembering their training is shown to be truly Herculean.  It takes a measure of courage to step into a fight but an entirely different kind of bravery—more level-headed—to fight well.  Calm under fire has long been a characteristic of heroes; perhaps that’s why people are so drawn to good boxers.            <<<