Fighter's Heart, A

by Sheridan, Sam

  Neungsiam’s opponent was a current top fighter, higher ranked, and the betting favorite. He was younger and leaner, but he seemed quickly intimidated by Neungsiam’s calm hostility and heavy touch. Neungsiam had power as well as speed, and his careful thinking and reasoning were apparent from ringside. I was too focused on the match to feel any stage fright when Kum and I leapt into the ring to massage Neungsiam between rounds; I just didn’t want to screw up my tiny part of the whole effort. In the corner between rounds, I filled my mouth with water and sprayed it onto Neungsiam’s legs and then roughly and vigorously massaged him, while Kum did the same to his upper body. The crowd breathed like the sea around us.

  The fight turned into a muay Thai clinic: Neungsiam took his opponent apart. He checked the kicks and counter-kicked with devastating power, and he punished his man whenever he tried something. Muay Thai matches are very much about composure: breathing through the nose, appearing unwinded and unhurt. Neungsiam’s calm, utterly hostile gaze cut through his man and everyone could see it. He hit too hard and his defense was too complete for his opponent; the man couldn’t find a rhythm and looked more and more ill at ease while trying to appear calm and collected. In the middle of the third round, Neungsiam chased him down in a flurry of pinpoint hard punches—you almost never jab in muay Thai—and knocked him out. He strode coolly away, shaking his right fist in triumph. It was awesome. His opponent left in a wheelchair.

  One day when I was in the office, e-mailing my mom, Anthony strode in and said he’d found an opponent for me. I finished the e-mail without mentioning it. The fight was set for July 14, nearly two months away, and I would be facing a heavyweight Japanese fighter who was also new to muay Thai. Anthony was relieved to have found an opponent for me; there were maybe only two Thais fighting near my weight (around 185 pounds) in the whole country, and they both would have obliterated me.

  Once my fight was scheduled, it loomed like a long, dark cloud on the horizon. I trained as hard as I could each day, full out. I joined the long morning runs with the Lumpini fighters who were about to fight, out in the dark before anyone else would go. I was discovering the key to building endurance: Push on when you feel you can’t, and next time that moment will come later. I had to push hard, because the fight was a “professional” fight, meaning five rounds.

  I had some doubts that would eat into my heart late at night, or when waking from an afternoon nap, but strangely enough my confidence seemed boundless; I couldn’t really imagine a bad outcome. But the fight drew closer and closer, and I began to feel that maybe I was overtraining, or getting sick, and the fears would plague me like a swarm of gnats.

  I stayed at it, training hard, and the days crept by until suddenly I was a week away. When gearing up for a fight, the fighter takes two or three days off from training immediately before the event, to allow his now rapacious stamina to rebuild and his body to heal. There were always little things: blisters, cuts, bruises. For my last morning run, I went out with Johann, a bald Belgian fighter with a scorpion tattooed on his ribs (clearly scorpions were a popular motif with the muay Thai crowd), and we went farther than usual. We turned around after five miles and noticed that a dark and dirty monsoon had been sneaking up on us the whole time. Big drops began to sizzle and splatter on the pavement like bleeding flies. In Thailand, for a fighter, the rain is death. The added stress of cold water on a fighter’s already maxed-out immune system almost guarantees sickness, and a sick fighter in a fight has about a third of his normal stamina, sometimes less.

  The rain was coming down so hard it misted off the ground up past my knees—a real tropical deluge—and it stripped the humidity out of the air, leaving a chill. About halfway back, Johann stopped to relieve himself; I decided to push on through the red mud and deepening puddles. My socks turned crimson and my calves were coated. When I finally got back to the camp, Apidej was worried, warming up the van to come find me. He hustled me into the hot tub and we skipped training that morning. Luckily, I didn’t get sick.

  The next day, Anthony and I received a startling fax from the Japanese promoter of my fight. The other fighter was going to try to make 203 pounds but would probably be over; he was thirty-eight years old; and here was the kicker: He was the 1994 Western Osaka heavyweight karate champion. It was my first fight ever and I weighed 187 pounds. Sometimes a professional fighter gives up two or three pounds. Sixteen pounds would be considered suicide. A larger man hits harder with more weight behind his blows. He also just takes up more space; he can do so much more, he can control the ring. When I sparred with Johnny, who weighs about 140 pounds, we were both surprised; he had better technique and moved well, but I was so much bigger, I could dominate him. I stumbled back to my room, thinking, How many fights did my opponent have to fight to become a champion? Fifteen? Twenty? Full-contact karate wasn’t muay Thai, but it was definitely full contact.

  A German guy named Bippo, who at twenty-eight had spent a lot of time in Thailand studying muay Thai, had helped me during my training. When I told him about the fax, he looked worried and made no effort to hide it. “You should cancel the fight,” he said. “This is a setup.” He talked about ax-kicks and other bone-breaking karate techniques that I would be completely unprepared for and might walk into blindly. Mostly, though, he talked about experience. “In my first fight, I was so nervous I couldn’t punch,” he told me.

  I left Bippo and went upstairs to my room. I thought about his advice. I could quit. I could get out of this! I felt the lure of escape, of dodging responsibility. When I was in junior high school, I loathed the pressure of football games and had a few times faked illness to get out of practice, though I always went to the games. Here was an excuse, an escape hatch. I sat on my dingy bed and stared at the fax. I realized that the guy was trying to psych me out. It enraged me, the idea that this guy thought he could play mind games with me.

  I turned it over in my mind. I was a long way from junior high. I was a lot stronger, and I was a better fighter than I’d been an offensive tackle. I was never going to be here again, and I had invested so much. To not fight would be to miss an unrepeatable opportunity. And somehow I couldn’t see losing; I just couldn’t imagine it.

  When I went downstairs for the afternoon session, I told Bippo, “I don’t care who he is, I’m going to kick his ass,” and Bippo smiled—he understood that braggadocio is part of gearing up for a fight. He understood, but he still thought I was in trouble.

  On the last day before the fight, resting in my room, I took a picture of my stuff hanging on the wall: my mongkol, my warm-up gear, my towel. Kum had made the mongkol out of thick red plastic string. I had reassured my mom via e-mail that it was blessed by Buddhist monks and would protect me. In a funny way, I was growing calmer.

  We drove down to Samrong, which was about twenty minutes away, and I could tell Anthony was nervous. Traffic was bad, and if it continued like this, we might not have enough time to prep. I stared out the window, watched the cars, and waited. Everything I could do was done. I was surprised at how relaxed I felt. I even found myself smiling.

  We got to Samrong with time to spare, and I met Bippo on the way in. I nodded hello but kept my head down. I didn’t really want to look at anybody I knew.

  I saw my opponent when I walked in the door of the stadium. I was taller than he was, and although he was as wide as a tree, height made a difference. He had a broad, pleasant face, and glasses, and his hair was cropped short. He was wearing karate gi pants and a T-shirt and his heavy forearms were covered in tattoos. We shook hands, smiling, and talked through our promoters. We nodded at each other, agreeing that this was a friendly match and we were not there to kill each other. Yeah, right, I thought. I may have been uninitiated, but I wasn’t stupid. This was a fight, not a sparring session, and he was going to try to hurt me. I knew I was supposed to be intimidated by him, but I was also aware that he wasn’t as cool as he pretended to be. Showing up in my Fairtex warm-up suit and being big and tall, I looked a l
ot more professional than I was.

  National Geographic was there to film a Westerner having his first muay Thai fight, part of a documentary they were doing on the sport, but it was easy to ignore them. I sat down in the stands, paranoid about wasting energy; I knew that I would need absolutely everything. Yaquit taped up my hands. Finally, it was me getting my hands taped—tape was different than the wraps, tighter, stronger, permanent. My opponent was walking around, a towel around his neck and both hands on it. He was big and burly, but, I reminded myself, thirty-eight years old. He should really sit down.

  Yaquit and I moved to the tables, and I lay down and got the hot-oil massage. It tingled and then stung. We didn’t talk much. Johann and Bippo and a few other farang stood around, nervous. I had a new roommate at Fairtex, a giant Swede named Blue, who was one of my cornermen and probably more nervous than I was. Blue was about as unsuitable for muay Thai as one could be, but he loved the sport and the training. He was a Fairtex lifer: He’d been there for twelve months some time ago, and when I was there, he was planning on staying for another year. He was seriously overweight—I would put him around 250—though the weight was sloughing off him in the heat. He was primarily there to lose weight; the first time he’d come to Fairtex he’d lost more than fifty pounds. Blue was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, without a mean bone in his body. The Thais loved him, both for his gentle demeanor and for his persistence in the face of his physicality.

  You had to give Blue credit. He wasn’t there to fight, and he didn’t have much form, but he tried. There was a trainer for the Lumpini fighters who in all my time there never spoke to me or looked at me once; he didn’t have any time for or interest in the silly farang. But he would talk to Blue. Blue had won them over by nearly killing himself training, by a show of heart. Now, at my fight, he had his hair carefully styled and looked nervous as hell.

  “Sam, you warm,” Yaquit said, as I climbed to my feet and began to shadowbox, staring at the floor. There are two schools of thought about where your eyes should be when fighting: You stare at your opponent’s eyes and let your peripheral vision cover his body like a membrane, or you stare at your opponent’s midsection. I was of the latter school. The eyes are for mind games, and intimidation, and distractions, and tricks. I don’t do any of those things. I just want to hit, to get through and make good connections, to be there in front of the other fighter and to find a way through him. I don’t care about him one way or the other; I don’t know him.

  There was a commotion where my opponent was warming up. He’d drawn a crowd, but I ignored it. I later found out that he was putting on a real show, dropping ax-kicks and flat-punching the brick walls. He’d also taken off his shirt and pants to reveal a body covered in deep, serious tattoos—demons and snakes and fish. The Thais loved it and were screaming, “Yakuza!” Traditionally, a member of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, has tattoos covering his entire body, except on his face, neck, and hands. Another Yakuza tradition is to cut off a finger to show regret if you disappoint your boss. I can’t prove that my opponent was Yakuza, but he was sporting about five thousand dollars’ worth of tattoos and he did show up with four or five burly Japanese guys (of course, they could have been friends from his gym or dojo). I learned later that he was missing half of his left pinkie. Maybe he wasn’t Yakuza, but the Thais certainly thought so.

  I put on my cup and fight shorts and went over and got my gloves. Yaquit tied them on. The gloves weighed ten ounces each and felt like nothing. At Harvard and Fairtex, I had used regular boxing gloves, the sixteen-ouncers, so I couldn’t believe these things. Once a fighter puts on those lobster claws, he’s good for only one thing.

  Yaquit spoke to me very intensely. “Sam, elbow,” he said, making an elbowing gesture. I could see he was worried. From the way everyone avoided my eyes, I was getting the sense that they were concerned for me.

  Then it was time to go.

  I step into the ring, and stand facing my corner, hands on the ropes, waiting for the music to start the wai khru. My pulse begins to race. I avoid looking at my opponent. Finally, I am really nervous.

  The music comes up, and we begin our walk. I move around the ring counterclockwise, with my inside fist up and outside fist on the top rope. This is a way to learn the ring, to feel it. I bow and say a prayer in each corner, ostensibly to placate the spirits of the corners. I read somewhere that the way to win a fight is to take control of one corner, and then another, until finally you control the whole ring. So I mutter to each corner as I stop and bow my head, “This is my corner.”

  Then the wai khru begins. I learned Apidej’s wai khru, as is proper. I walk in small spiraling circles into the center of the ring and carefully get down on my knees, kowtowing toward my own corner, my back to my opponent’s corner. The wai khru is the time to think about your parents, your family, and your trainer. I do, and it works. It centers me, reminding me of why I am here and who I am.

  I sit up and bow three times, swinging my arms wide and curling them up to my face as I arch back. And then a slow climb to the feet, the ram muay, turning and stepping lightly, deliberately, dancing to the beat like it’s an Indian rain dance. I stare at the ground, intent on learning every square inch of the canvas, of knowing the dimensions of the ring. It’s all mine.

  The music ends. I bow to my corner and go over to Yaquit. He removes my mongkol and says something in Thai—which I don’t understand and doesn’t concern me—and crosses himself; he’s Catholic. Later I found out he had said, “Sam, have a cool heart.”

  I go back to the center and touch gloves with my opponent. He is trying to glare me down. I’m not interested in a staring contest. The referee holds both our gloves and says something in Thai, warning us. We both nod, even though neither of us understands him.

  I return to my corner and the bell rings. The pipes trill, and we come together. I have my game plan and I’m not going to deviate from it: Take it easy the first round, kick low and hard at his legs, and feel him out. Nobody kicks high until the third round. Don’t clinch.

  I kick him first, a low right-leg kick, and a few seconds later land a weak left-leg kick. I fight traditional, or orthodox, stance, which, like boxing, leads with the left, so my stronger kicks are right-leg kicks. The lead-leg kicks require a quick shuffle step that telegraphs. My opponent comes back with a heavy, strong leg kick. He is a southpaw, a lefty, so he uses his right hand to jab and his left to power punch. He begins alternating between leading with his left and leading with his right, a very karate thing to do, to try to confuse your opponent. His stance is shallow, though, and his shoulders are nearly parallel with mine, so it doesn’t make much difference; the angle and speed of his blows don’t change much whether he is leading left or right. After a few more punches, he throws a heavy kick to my right side, low, just above the waist, and I think, Hey, maybe I can kick to the body too.

  I’m not really thinking out there; I’m just trying to stay with him, stay in his face. There are moments when the ref is yelling, “Pick it up, Red!”—referring to my red trunks—which kind of throws me, as my world has shrunk to my opposition and nothing exists or makes sense outside of our intense dialogue of punches and kicks. I just want to keep up my end of the conversation.

  My opponent keeps landing heavy kicks on my lead leg, on the outside of my left knee. They don’t really hurt, but I know that it’s not good for me. For some reason, I can’t block them shin on shin.

  Suddenly I’m on my ass, scrambling to get to my feet. I can’t tell if it was a punch or kick that put me down, I think probably a kick. I just want to get up, to get on with it, to get back in front of him. I don’t even take my standing eight count to catch my breath, which surprises my opponent a little; he’s already walked over to his corner. He comes back warily and we touch gloves. He should jump all over me, but he doesn’t, so I take those few seconds of rest. Then I start punching, and he stumbles and slips and goes down on his own.

  I am exhausted, b
ut I hear Blue calling through the haze, “He’s through! He’s through!” and I think, Shit, Blue’s right. He’s all done. I just have to keep on him, not let up, and he’ll run out of gas.

  He keeps swinging for me, going for the big knockout punch, but I keep my hands up and he never lands one. I chase him around and he turns and grapples with me, and I hear someone yell, “Knee!” I throw a knee, just a little one. I feel it smush into his gut, into the softness underneath his rib cage, and to my astonishment he collapses, just goes straight down. The ref steps in and I stand over my opponent in amazement. Finally, I walk over to a neutral corner, unable to believe what is happening. I watch him try, still on one knee, to pick up his mouth guard, and I think, Don’t get up, don’t get up. Then the ref beckons me over, so I start back, squaring myself up, getting back onto my toes. The ref looks back at him, and he still isn’t really on his feet. He is doubled over and pawing weakly for his mouth guard, swaying unsteadily. The ref waves him out. First-round KO.

  I was relieved, but I didn’t quite know what to do. I went down on one knee next to my opponent, who had collapsed again, touched his gloves, and said something like “Good fight,” and he nodded. He was fine, just a little winded. We walked over to his corner, and it didn’t seem like I was going to get a drink from his guys, so I went back into the middle of the ring and bowed to the judges and the crowd. It was a little anti-climactic. Usually after a fight the winner and loser will go arm in arm to both corners and have a drink of water from each trainer. I had been killing myself with Apidej for months to be ready for five rounds, and all I got was one?