Fighting is undeniably a fact of life. Like it or not, someone is always waging war on you for that job, that potential relationship partner, that social status, and anything else one can think of. This life is quite literally a fight to the death.
Perhaps the hardest fight we face comes when we’re alone. From the time we’re young, we exist in a perpetual battle with that voice inside our own heads that chips away at us for not being good enough, intelligent enough, competent enough, tall enough, or skinny enough. The list goes on.
“Look at you baldy, grow some hair.” You know that voice. It’s the voice that stops you from expanding outside your comfort zone to learn new things, the voice that puts up roadblocks in your life’s path, and the voice that keeps you from being the person you want to be. We can be our own worst enemies.
A friend of mine recently asked me what it was like to step in a boxing ring for the first time and it made me think deeply about that nagging voice and how best to overcome fear. After all, a desire to tell that voice to shut its mouth is what got me into the sport in the first place. After backing down from a few fights throughout my childhood and being unable to get the self-hating all the way out of my system, I guess you could say I had something to prove.
When my buddy posed this question to me, my response to him was to imagine the fear of public speaking multiplied a million times. I read somewhere that people fear public speaking more than anything else, but I don’t buy it. Public fighting is way worse.
My first-ever opponent was a yoked-up firefighter who walked around the Atlanta Police Athletic League boxing gym with confidence and swagger. He was heavier and taller than me, but I was a young and fit 24-year-old who had the advantage of youth over him by probably 8 or 10 years. I was fearful, but not of him.
Going into it, I knew that I’d be fighting in front of a crowd of people who I’d have to see again and again professionally for a long time. A whipping would have surely dented any tough-guy reputation I might have had, but people who demean or besmirch others as they throw caution to the wind are just noise makers trying to build themselves up to face the voices of their own demons. Whether or not I’m any good at it, you can either get in there and do what I’m doing or shut up about it. I was still scared to fight, but not of those people.
For me, the fear was completely internal. Put plainly, I was afraid that I might at some point give up on myself and have to face the music that I cracked under pressure. We’ve all given up on ourselves before, when things got tough. Is there any worse feeling afterwards?
I trained incredibly hard, got my bell rung a few times in sparring, and fought through a soreness in muscles I didn’t even know I had for about three months leading up to fight night. Still, my insecurities had such a powerful grip on me that I irrationally destroyed the old legs on the eve of the fight by running three miles for speed. I just had to prove to myself that I was in tip-top shape and ready to go. Well, it cost me dearly. Remember how I said we can be our own worst enemies?
When I opened my eyes the morning of the fight, I was instantly filled with dread. My legs felt like achy lead pipes and an Epsom salt bath failed to do anything for them. I had a hard time holding down breakfast and this pervasive thought that I had sabotaged myself lingered every second of every minute in the hours leading up to leaving for the Atlanta Civic Center. I was completely overcooked and there was no turning back. The sun was going to set and I was soon going to have to face this guy.
I was about to go into war and fight to the death, but that didn’t matter. The thing about potentially deadly situations in Cop-land is you don’t get the chance to experience the anticipation. Those events tend to come out of nowhere and then they’re over with before you can do anything but react. After all, perps who want to hurt us aren’t known for sending out an invitation with a date and time to show up. The fight you know is coming crawls deeper into your soul than the one that takes you by surprise.
When I got to the venue and the festivities began, I could easily see that the anticipation was getting to a lot of other guys too. It was all over their faces. A part of you just wants to hurry up and get it over with so the sickness in your stomach and pounding of your heart will go away. The other part of you is watching all the fights before yours and hoping time will magically slow to a stop so that you never have to dive out of that airplane—but then they call your name and your music hits. In that moment, you feel alive. It’s hard to keep from dropping F-bombs to describe it. You feel f***ing alive.
When the first bell I’d ever answered rang and the punches started flying, those butterflies—no—those dragonflies in my belly disappeared instantly. I was no longer nervous. I was completely out of my mind. People always talk about the fight-or-flight response but what’s more significant is the complete ego-death you experience when you get socked in the face. No sparring session can prepare you for it. You’ve never done anything like this before and you’re soon flailing like a fish out of water as a result.
As punches whizzed by my skull, I couldn’t think to do anything but return fire and I couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in my ears. It sounds crazy, but there in my mouthpiece I learned what adrenaline tasted like. At one point, I wondered if I had just heard my Pop scream my name, and a flashback to my high school wrestling days flashed by. Then the thought was cleaned from my clock with a thudding shot to the dome.
Later in that first round, I had a scare. From out of nowhere, I completely lost my vision and legs from under me as if all my life had just been sucked out. Everything just went black. After stumbling back in retreat for a second or two, I once again felt the weight of my body come back under me and I could see my opponent coming forward. The amazing thing about it was that this dire circumstance wasn’t caused by a well-landed shot to my melon at all. It was a full-on short circuit and reset. The experience made me understand how some people can spontaneously faint from being utterly overwhelmed. When I came to, I hunkered down and went back to slugging it out with the reckless abandon of a cornered animal.
There was nothing pretty or technically impressive about my first boxing match, but my opponent and I were well matched first-timers who put on a close one. At the start of the final round, I made a deal with myself that I would close it out by just biting down on my mouth guard and launching one-twos until I collapsed or heard the bell. It was a battle of wills between two men who decided there’d be no flight and I hated every second of it. Then, it was over.
The feeling of relief at the end of your first ring war is like waking up realizing you’re alive after waking up from one of those nightmares where you’re about to die. I wound up getting my hand raised for bringing the fight to my opponent in that final round when it mattered most—and that euphoric wave washing over my spent carcass was better than sex. It didn’t matter that it was just some rinky-dink police vs. fire amateur boxing match or even that I won. No one could take that moment away from me. I bent without breaking and I didn’t quit on myself. Mission accomplished.
As the next couple of years and fights added up, I got more comfortable being in the ring. The fear before the bell never goes away but it’s more manageable now. If getting into a boxing ring for the first time sounds absolutely horrifying, it is. If it seems like something you could never do, then good—because that’s exactly why you should do it. Screw that voice!
