8 December, 2008

Kickboxing in Chiba, this time with gloves on

Ben Vignola

It was an hour before my fight when Sato Shihan told me that my opponent had pulled out with an injury and, instead of a no show, I was to face a welterweight pro fighter instead. Sato pointed to the tallest guy in the room as he told me and my heart sank.

I felt like I was being stitched up - I was supposed to be fighting someone with as little experience as I, also, of a similar age and weight. Instead, I was to face a younger, faster, professional fighter with the confidence of experience, my only consolation being that I outweighed him by almost twenty kilos. At that moment though, having received beating after beating in sparring from a short welterweight, Muto-san, the weight difference meant very little and I knew how hard this fight might be for me. I didn't even have the advantage of reach on my guy - he was a little taller than me and I had no chance of keeping him at the end of my jab, in fact, it looked like I was going to have to work to get inside his guard. My first reaction was dismay, then bitterness - for a moment I thought that the non Shidokan gym wanted to teach me a lesson by chucking in a ringer and giving me a hiding - then it solidified and I forced myself to become determined, grim, even. If they were going to stack the deck, then fine, fuck them too... If I was to lose to this guy then I would make him pay for every second in the ring and make sure he didn't get the satisfaction of knocking me out.

Chiba is on the other side of Tokyo from where I live and it took us a good couple of hours to drive there. Ishawa-san, a middleweight fighter from Honbu Dojo, Lek-san and myself left at half eight in the morning and I settled in the back of the car with my ipod and a book (Foucault's Pendulum, if any of you care). When we finally arrived, the gym was in the same building complex as the train station and was a tiny little room - about the size of three boxing rings - with mirrors along one entire wall, a boxing ring on a raised podium at one end with about thirty chairs lined up in front of it. We bowed and were shown to the fighter's preparation area upstairs - an empty shop unit on the floor above with no furniture, nothing at all actually except the sixty or so fighters and an old set of scales in the corner.

I stripped down an weighed in at eighty nine kilos, just under my normal weight, then settled down for the wait. I had already seen the list of fights and, out of thirty two, I was fight number thirty, the last of the amateur fights and it meant that I had a good three hours to wait. The fight list told me that my opponent was two years older, ten centimeters shorter and about five kilos lighter than I. He wasn't a complete novice - I was to be his fourth opponent and his record was one win, one loss and one draw; so, he was no Mike Tyson and, on those stats, I felt fairly confident about facing him. It was eleven am and reckoned to be fighting at two or three, so I sat down and got the book out again.

Lek-san came over to me after a while, maybe an hour, to bandage up my hands. Ten minutes later, with fists twice their normal size and feeling less out of place, Lek-san and I went down to the gym to watch the fights.

Sato-shihan had come with two of his fighters and he had brought Shinobu-san too. I was really happy because Shinobu is a huge support to me here in Japan and had told me the day before that she couldn't make it. On top of that, Halal-san, another guy from Honbu, had come too, again hugely unexpectedly - Chiba is miles away - and the fact that the gang was all there was a huge boost to the morale. While I wasn't feeling massively confident, I wasn't that worried either - I just spent the time watching the fighters and running over everything that Lek-san had been drumming in to me over the past few weeks. Lek-san is a really good teacher; he told me to stick to a couple of basic tactics in the ring, conserve my strength, pick my moment and hit hard. From watching the amateurs fight in the last three event's that I've attended, the pattern seems to be that the less experienced fighters tend to go at it hammer and tongs, knacker themselves out by the middle of the first round and then lurch around getting hit for the rest of the fight. I planned to take a confident but a measured approach, keep my gloves high, lead with my low kick and look to hit him on the counter. 

Anyway, that was the plan and when Sato-shihan approached me, an hour or so out from my fight, with the news of the fighter change, it all went out the window.

I am alright with losing. I mean, I hate it but I understand that it doesn't really matter, it's hard enough just getting in the ring - I believe that alone deserves as much respect as anything. The culture in Japan is vastly different, however, winning is everything, losers are beneath contempt and people who try their hardest are merely behaving as they should, in Japan, to try your hardest is to do the minimum required. I'm so glad that I'm European. Still, having said that, I was not looking forward to my fight anymore, I felt that what had previously been a fair match up had changed - there was an air of foul play about the situation and I was feeling a little like a sacrificial pig. Anyway, that last hour was not the best but there was very little to be done, so I tried to forget it and think only about how I was going to fight the man.

Ishawa-san was called to the ring and, as he was fighting just before me, I also went to our corner with Sato-shihan for final prep. I noticed that my opponent was also in his fighting kit now and I got a good look at him - he was gangly and not heavily muscled; he had a massive reach with both his legs and arms and I expected him to be quick with his hands. I discussed it with Sato-shihan and he told me to keep it simple - jab, cross, then low kick; if he uses the maegeri to keep me away, then palm it round, get inside his guard and hiza the body.

As I was stretching, the owner of the gym came over and started talking to Sato-shihan. More good news - for my fight, there was to be a rule change, low kicks were disallowed. Five minutes before I got into the ring for my first fight, against a pro fighter no less, I was being told that I couldn't use my most practiced tactic, gutted does not describe my feelings. Sato-shihan asked me if I understood and if I was ok - he explained that it was the weight difference that prompted the rule change; since I was nearly twenty kilos heavier, it wasn't fair to my opponent. I have to say that I didn't really take the news with good grace - I explained to Sato-shihan that he might be lighter but he was a pro fighter, half way through my reply, I changed my mind and just told him, ok, fine, no problem. 

I was fucking seething.

It didn't occur to me for a moment that my opponent would be as worried, if not more, than I was. In my usual self obsessed idiom, I merely thought that the gym was behaving incredibly badly in stacking the deck. The one positive effect of the news was that it fired me up for the fight. All nervousness was banished and replaced with a surge of energy, I entered the ring buoyed on a tide of anger and impatiently hopped about as I waited for my opponent to get in. He did, we met in the middle with the bespectacled ref, touched gloves, muttered polite greetings - onegaii shimas - bowed and went to our corners to wait for the bell.

I battered him. Emphatically. 

I spent the two rounds backing him into the corners or onto the ropes and preceded to dish out a hiding. He started the first round well, he hit me with a jab and then, as I came in, a good cross but I was ready for it and hit him on the counter with a left hook and a hard right cross that sent him reeling onto the ropes. I know I had shaken him because, after that, he was leaning way back onto the ropes and trying to keep his head out harms way. So, as he bobbed his head around, I managed to plant a couple more on his chin before the ref separated us. As I came in the next time, he tried to hit me with a kick to the head, I blocked, countered with a cross then landed a decent hiza to the ribs. For the rest of the round, he was completely defensive - trying to keep me at the end of his maegeri and moving constantly away from me. I really had to work to close him down and, when we were close, had to be very sharp to land squarely on his head; he had an excellent guard. Still, I hounded him around the ring and landed loads of solid shots - I threw a few decent maiwashi-chudans too; he had a moment of being a bit clever with his feet and tried to fake a left but throw the right; I saw it, blocked it then did the same in return - he was surprised that it got through (I have fast feet for a heavyweight) and I wanted to smile.

When the buzzer sounded for the end of the first round, I felt very calm. I was breathing heavily but I felt calm and in control - of the punches that he landed, I had only felt one, that first cross and, at the end of the first round, I felt confident of being able to take his best shot in my stride. In my corner, Sato-shihan was telling me to up my work rate, keep pressuring him and throw more combinations while Lek-san advised the opposite. I decided to do both, in their own time. 

There is not really much more to tell; the second round went as well as the first - he did land a decent hook and I felt he would have been able to do much better if he was more positive but, instead, he concentrated on trying to keep me away from his head at the end of his jab. It didn't work - I closed him down, hit him a couple of times and grappled him till I could throw a hiza or two and we were separated. This went on for the round - I backed him up, took  a jab or two on the way in and did my best to knock his block off - I don't think I took one backward pace for the entire fight. I noticed that my focus did narrow in the second round - I lost track of time a little and don't remember seeing anything but him, not the ref, not the judges, just him and the ropes. It's not happened before and I found that, at the end of the fight, I was a little disorientated and thought there was another round to go.

There was an odd moment at the end; the refs all had the red flag up - indicating that my I had won but the ref didn't raise my arm in the middle, in fact, he didn't even call us into the middle to decide the winner. After I had bowed to his trainer I went over to Lek-san and asked him if we had one more round - I thought that maybe it was a draw or something. He told me no and Sato-shihan explained that there was no official win or loss, it was a no contest due to the weight difference. Officially, the fight did not take place. I can understand it - he was a pro fighter and didn't want to mar his record with an unfair bout but he really shouldn't have got in the ring if that was the case; maybe he thought he'd win.

Anyway, they gave me the winner's certificate and I went to bow to the gym owner and the fighter one more time before getting changed.

I didn't feel like I had really won - again, the circumstances were unusual, the fight uneven and I felt as if I had got away without being tested - I didn't have to reach inside for my guts or find any grit to get through the fight.

I think it was too easy.

I know, it's an absurd thing to say but, given that I was initially concerned with merely remaining on my feet for the two rounds, to have so comprehensively thrashed my opponent, as I did, left me feeling curiously out of place. 

Anyway, whatever, Lek-san was happy with the way I controlled the fight and has put me in for another bout in a month, the 21st of December actually. Who knows, I might get a proper go at it the next time round, or, at least a bloody nose for my trouble.

Until then

Osu