Day 0 - Why I train. Why I fight.

Equipped with a rugged, pocket-sized digital camcorder, over the next ten weeks I will be documenting for you my experience as I put myself through a training camp designed to prepare me for a national amateur boxing tournament -- the Desert Showdown.


Some boxers will travel from all around the country to compete in this week-long event in the Coachella Valley.  I am fortunate to live only an hour-long drive away in Twentynine Palms, California.  Anyone familiar with the Morongo Basin might disagree with the favorable characterization of the area.  The Morongo Basin is located in the High Desert region of Southern California.  The area's elevation can range from 1,950 feet in Twentynine Palms to 3,000 feet in Yucca Valley.  The terrain is hilly, barren, austere.  In some places it even resembles the moon.  More important, it is very, very hot.  In July, the month of the tournament, the temperature will average 106 degrees.  The record high there, in 2005, was one hundred and nineteen degrees.  It is no wonder the Marines have chosen this site to conduct their pre-deployment training.  

I am not going to be paid for participating in this tournament.  There will be no endorsements, no world championship at stake.  On the other hand, there is a not-insignificant risk of humiliation and permanent injury to me.  Why, then, do I train?  Why then do I feel I must fight?

Not long after I started training at Boston Boxing in Lower Allston, Massachusetts, I knew I had found something special.  Nothing excites me or interests me more than boxing.  I am far from a natural, though. The skills I have developed have been acquired through sweat and toil.  To succeed in this tournament, given the focus, discipline, and attention to detail necessary would be one of the greatest thrills of my life.  Even to lose, knowing that I gave my all for this goal, to have hurled myself head-first toward the challenges and the sacrifices expected a champion would be enough.  Because, to paraphrase Roosevelt, the credit belongs to the man in the "squared circle," face marred by dust and sweat and blood,  who spends himself in a worthy cause, though coming up short again and again.  

But there is another reason I fight.  My father is currently fighting his own battle with cancer.  He was diagnosed with it in 2008.  Without taking a day off from work he fought through chemotherapy and radiation treatment.  His cancer has recently returned.  I train knowing that boxing makes both fighter and fight fan come alive.  I train so that he has something to be proud of -- so that he knows he is not fighting alone.