In My Corner

I know it sounds very self aggrandising but I am utterly loyal to those I care about. I would quite happily stand shoulder to shoulder with them when its all kicking off as I know they’d do the same for me. Its like jail, a subject ill return to. In there are some very untrustworthy people (shock there!) banged up. However, I did make some very good friends in the grey bar hotel and given the nature of jail, sometimes situations would occur where it would be time for us to step up and stand with out friends, whether it be against another con or a screw. Thankfully it didn’t happen too often.

You may think there’s no reason for me to be on this train of thought but you’d be wrong, oh so very wrong.

See, the gym I mostly use is split in two, both literally and figuratively. There are 2 rooms, and the room I train in is run by John, my coach whereas the other room is run by Chris who is also the gym owner. Us that train with John are seen as a club with in a club and that’s fine by me. However for a couple reasons Chris is jealous of John and constantly runs him down, but not in obvious ways. Last night we got in and were about to start our warm up (50 x press ups, 50 x squat thrusts, 50 x star jumps and 50 x tuck jumps) when Tony, one of the other coaches came in and said we were all to go into Chris’s room to watch a DVD on the basics of boxing. Now I’ve been training for more than 2 years and I know my stuff. Some of the others in with me have been training for over 15 years. The tone was very condescending and the thing went on for 30 minutes. That’s a quarter of the session gone. As we filed out, Chris made a few barbed comments and I copped the raving hump.

John took me to one side as he could see I was fuming.

He said that he didn’t want to see me fuck things up now, given that I am close to my goal of a fight. He also said that he wants to achieve my goal with me and that he’d be in my corner the entire way. He said that seeing me climb into the ring would be one of his proudest moments, as good as seeing Louis, his son, win a tournament. He told me not to let it go, not now as he wanted to achieve all that with me and that if I did screw it up, I would let him down.

I cannot tell you how much of a boost that was to me. I know that at it’s purest, I’ll be fighting for me, that there’ll will physically only be me in the ring but I know full well that I’ll have John behind me and I’ll be representing him. Without wanting to sound gushing, if John told me to go run through a brick wall, I’d give it a go. I do not know if this will come across well but that’s about the only way I can explain it.