You want to say that you’re chasing the truth, but you know how stupid you’d sound. You explain that you want a story about the whole family and not just Buddy.
“I mean, I get it,” Buddy says. He smacks his lips and sways his head. “I get it. You askin’ me these questions, so I gotta answer back truthfully.” He still looks in the direction of the small group beneath us, but they’ve moved from the wall mirror over to the red-canvassed ring. Now they spar each other and whack each other and crack each other with their white gloves on their white headgear. They push each other back and shift each other around. They all look strong.
So, does Buddy remember what happened with the divorce?
“Well, me and Yvette, we just couldn’t stay together,” he says. “I don’t got nothin’ bad to say about Yvette. Bottom line: she would’ve been homesick, y’know? I wanted to move out here, finish raisin’ the kids out here, and she didn’t, but we didn’t leave each other on a bad note. I mean, I understood exactly where she was comin’ from. She lived in Kansas her whole life, and she didn’t want to leave. We had talks, we had talks. And I tried to tell her that I was travelin’ and commutin’ and deployin’ all the time, for years, and I never asked her to move out of Kansas. When I retired, I felt I’d earned it.”
You think about the timeline and recall that Olympia was already college age, but you wonder why Buddy left his young son Elmo. You ask him.
“Now, I told you, that’s not what happened,” Buddy says. He slaps his hand on the railing, sending a vibration on through to your own grip. “You tryin’ to paint this picture, you tryin’ to shape this story as if I left my family, and that’s not what happened at all.” He turns his gaze from the small group to you and then back to the group. Some of them leave the ring and begin punching the hanging heavy bags. The fighters patter and pop the bags over and over. They stiffen their arms and wrists into the cylindrical slabs for brief moments before loosening and bouncing and relaxing. Then they go back at it again. They appear to know what they’re doing.
But does Buddy know what happened when he left?
He rolls his shoulders. “Well, truthfully, custody laws are a bitch, you know what I mean?” he says. “The laws that say who gets hold of what child, and for how long, they all favor the mother. They do. And I don’t play no games.”
You ask how the laws favor the mother.
“Courts think young kids belong with they mother,” Buddy says. “I was told it was a ‘tender years’ type thing. So she got custody of my son.”
Does he have many memories of Elmo after that?
“No, not really.”
You want to know why not.
“Well, she got full custody, you know?” he says. “And I had really poor visitation rights. And that’s not really raisin’ a child anyway. Not to me.”
What does he mean?
“A father that’s a visitor ain’t really no father.”
You look away and drop your head. Your lowered gaze watches the small group start to skip rope. Their ropes thwack against the floor quickly, exhaustingly, but these young men still look strong. They keep speed. They don’t look weary to you; they look eager to you. You ask Buddy whether Elmo ever wanted to box.
“Yeah, he did,” Buddy said. “He did, and I put a stop to it. I didn’t want him to, plain and simple. Elmo had a way about him, a wisdom that most kids didn’t have. But he wasn’t a fighter. I didn’t want him to get hurt. There’s really no other way to say it.” He tilts his head, nods to himself, shrugs ever so slightly. “You know, I still got that fight tonight, and I don’t think you should be distractin’ me and my fighter at that time.” Buddy watches you and tightens his eyes. “So I’ll see you after the fight.”
Ten
You’ve never attended a boxing card, but you have to start somewhere. That somewhere is Madison Square Garden, right now at about 6:45pm, and you’ve gone to find the press entrance so you can pick up your credentials. But you’re lost. You don’t know where to go. You’ve never had a Garden assignment from your magazine. So you circle and circle until you ask yourself why you need to do this. But you remember Elmo and those recordings and your story – your story – and you press on.
You find the press entrance. It’s on Eighth Avenue between Thirty-Third Street and Thirty-First Street, and there’s a line. The line contains men of varying ages, all looking eager and tired and annoyed. But the line shortens, and you follow.
You arrive at the press table to receive your credentials, say you’re with the magazine, gain entry to the event. You’ve done this at other places, but not here, not with this group. As you speak with the Garden official, the door bangs open and you see a dark-fitted entourage clamber in through the back entrance. They surround a smaller man, dressed head to toe in a matching charcoal sweat suit like a traveling high-school athlete. Over his shoulder stands Buddy Scrubb. He nods neither to you nor to any of the other press. The writers themselves don’t even appear to know who any of these people are. Buddy and his fighter get waved through, and you cannot pursue.
You pick up your press packet and discover that the boxing card tonight has nine fights and takes place in the 5500-person side theater rather than the 20000-person main room. Your eyes spot Buddy’s fighter in the third bout from the bottom, and you figure that he’s on early. You head to your seat.
Press row contains an even less colorful cast of characters than the line from before. These writers on the floor level mostly work for national publications, while the Garden relegates everyone else to the raised balcony above and away from the ring. Unlike their local or Internet counterparts on the balcony, the men here look uniformly white and middle aged (or older). They appear rounder and older and whiter than the sculpted and younger and darker fighters you’ve seen at Buddy’s gym. You don’t know if the differences are simply due to society or upbringing or what, but you know that journalists like these sometimes make or break careers. And you wonder if the fate of a fighter like Buddy’s is in the hands of people who are nothing like him.
Are you being fair? You concede that you’re a newcomer here. You understand enough to know that a single loss can crush a fighter, that how writers spin the result can mean as much as the result itself. But you don’t know how often this happens. You wonder whether you overestimate the power of a boxing journalist. Now you remember Buddy’s spite for what the sport has become, recall the conviction with which he said it, and you consider that maybe Buddy just hates writers like you. And maybe you can’t blame him.
The seats feel nice to you, at least. You sit at a long table behind another long table with the other writers in front of the ring, a ring staring you down at eye level, as if challenging you to see the truth here on the floor. You don’t know if you’ll recognize the truth when you see it. But you’re ready to try.
The first two fights pass quickly, yet the novelty of live boxing intrigues you. You watch a tattooed and shaven-headed man try (and fail) to thwack a brown-skinned and mussy-haired boy in the face. The man looks determined but uncoordinated, like a calf learning to walk, while the boy bounces around like a wallaby. They both, it appears to you, are pretending to be something they’re not.
Once four three-minute rounds expire and the referee raises the boy’s hand, two more dressed in trunks and gloves and boots enter the ring. This pair finishes faster; the bell rings, a glove bangs, punches pummel, and one of them plops down off his boots, appears to think it over, and stays seated on his trunks when you hear the count of ten. You see what looks like the fallen fighter’s trainer shaking his head, lifting him up, hugging him close. You’re unsure why this affects you, but it does.
It’s early, and only a few rows of the theater are filled in around you. You imagine the average fan still in the concession line, waiting for his buttered, golden popcorn and his bitter, amber beer – or even back at home, still getting ready for the evening. You note that the third bout from the bottom – the one with Buddy’s fighter –
comes next and that the headlining fight won’t start for several more hours. And you also note that, for Buddy and his fighter and for you, too, the main event is about to begin.
Buddy and his lieutenants walk to the ring first. He marches behind his man, grasping his shoulder, peering forward, approaching together. Buddy appears to ignore both boos and cheers (though you notice very little of each) as well as the aggressive hip-hop being blasted into the arena. When he and his fighter enter the ring, Buddy stands a few inches taller than his man, a man who resembles a long stalk of corn. Buddy removes his newsboy cap. His brown scalp shines in the bright lights. He turns to where they came from and stiffens, as if holding his ground.
The opponent enters the theater amid flashing green lights and whistling pipes of some kind. He and his company sport uniform Irish gear that matches the handful of Irish flags in the audience. A pair of flagbearers crisscross an aisle like patriotic streakers at a soccer match. This mini-pageantry underlines and contrasts with the goateed, expressionless opponent now approaching the ring, an opponent who calls himself the “Celtic Dragon.”
You glance again at the press packet and mark the records of each fighter. Both Buddy’s man and his opponent have each had fewer than ten fights, but neither has suffered a loss. This fight pits prospect versus prospect, so you expect close competition. “This should be a good one,” you hear a neck-bearded writer say nearby.
The bell chimes, and right away you notice that these two appear tighter, crisper, faster, stronger, just plain better than the fighters from before. But you don’t fully understand what you’re watching. You learn from Buddy later that the two are fighting in the proverbial phone booth – inside, close together, swinging hooks and lifting uppercuts and bashing and grunting and almost butting heads, as if trying to impose mind and body and strength on each other. Neither has the upper hand, but you see so much contact. You hear the bell clang; that was only the first round.
In between rounds, you look over to Buddy’s corner, positioned right in front of you, and you see Buddy whispering in his fighter’s ears and wiping the bridge of his fighter’s nose with a towel. Buddy does not appear concerned; he’s not even sweating.
Here comes the second round, and here comes Buddy’s guy. He charges and wings shots and widens shots and drives the opponent back into the other corner, back in close and into the zone of hooks and uppercuts and bams and whams and perspiration. But he loses ground to the opponent, who moves and feints and rotates around back to center ring and jabs and blocks over and over, as if reasserting control, reiterating dominance, redefining strength. And the two fall into this fast motion of charges and rotations – the wildfire of this sport that you know hoary writers like to muse about. But you see what they mean.
Near the end of the three-minute round, Buddy’s fighter rams his knuckles right through his opponent’s arms and into his opponent’s face and causes the opponent to collapse and twist and tumble onto the canvas. The opponent sits up on one knee, conscious and nodding and looking wide eyed yet clear eyed to you. You spot Buddy, who raises a closed fist into the air, but the opponent stands before the count of ten, and the round ends.
The opponent enters the third and acts like nothing has happened. He lowers his head and wades back into the fire of Buddy’s fighter. But Buddy’s man now has crimson splattered above his left eye, a color that leaks like a cauldron in the heat of combat. Buddy’s guy begins to throw less than the opponent, who stokes his own flame with punch after punch after punch pop pop pop against Buddy’s bleeding fighter. When the round closes, Buddy and his cornermen apply swabs and pressure to their fighter’s bloody brow. Buddy elevates his voice above a whisper.
The two fighters continue in round four. Again they charge and hook and bam and wham and rotate together. They blend features, merge strategies, become twin flares to you. You see Buddy talking to himself during the round, never wincing, always peering.
Buddy shifts his expression in the opening seconds of round five, when his fighter charges again and hooks again but, this time, he catches the opponent flailing. The opponent crumples into the ring ropes like a Slinky, down on the canvas for the second time, and you see Buddy lift both arms. He smiles.
But the opponent gets up. He takes more shots, suffers more. The opponent doesn’t fire back, but he stays upright. He stands up to Buddy’s guy, who starts to slow and sag his arms in front of you. You notice Buddy massaging his now-wrinkled forehead.
In the sixth, Buddy’s fighter moves his arms without speed, without snap, at the opponent. The opponent keeps to himself for the first half of the round, absorbing the slackened blows. He starts to throw in the latter half, begins to connect with Buddy’s fighter. Buddy stoically stares into the ring.
The seventh begins, and you feel like you know the end. You hear Buddy’s fighter wheeze; you see a man with little left. You watch the round continue. You hear the crack of the hook, see the crank of the neck, watch Buddy’s fighter burn down like a stalk in a blaze. You look to Buddy and notice how he grips the ropes, as if he wants to help. He briefly rattles them. But he sits down, he glances down, and his fighter stays down. Buddy appears to know it’s over, and so do you.
Eleven
In the innards of Madison Square Garden right after the fight, you enter a salt-white locker room filled with bodies in ash-black outfits. You spy Buddy’s fighter on a stool in the corner, his face lowered and a sodden grey towel over his head. He has Buddy by his side, and you walk up to him. Buddy grabs his fighter by the shoulder, tells him that he’ll be back, directs you to the dim, dark hallway.
What are Buddy’s thoughts about what happened in there?
“It was a great fight,” Buddy says. “I take my hat off to the opponent, the Irish kid; he did what he was supposed to do. He got up, he stayed up. He’s a tough kid. We knew that goin’ in. We were beatin’ on him, and it looked like the knockout was comin’. We knew we could hit him, we knew there were some things we could do to him, but we also knew there were some things he could do to us. We knew it was a dangerous situation. I mean, I reserve my opinions on a lot of things that I feel in my heart based on the way I saw those rounds go, but it was a great fight.”
You’re curious to know how Buddy really feels. You think you see his bulwarks buckling, so you ask him if he is emotional about the fight.
“Emotional?” Buddy says. He looks past you, as if trying to find meaning in the darkness. “I mean, you have to feel somethin’ for your fighter. I’ve seen this kid and many just like him go through so much, and you want success for ‘em. They’re becomin’ men, real men.”
Does Buddy want to keep training this fighter?
“Ya, I mean, I’m down with him, whatever he wants to do, if he wants to keep fightin’.”
The cool air drifts through the empty hallway and past your ears, as if advising you to fill the void, to ask the questions. You want to know what Buddy meant earlier about how he “saw those rounds go.”
“I mean, that fight should have been stopped in the fifth,” Buddy says. “The Irish kid, he has a lot of talent, a lot of ability, a lot of heart to stay on his feet after takin’ all those punches. But he wasn’t respondin’ after the second knockdown. He got beat up. He wasn’t throwin’ back. This ain’t no championship fight; this ain’t no big-time television fight. These are two prospects. There’s less on the line, you know? You want these kids to be able to fight another day. A normal ref would have stopped it when he was just standin’ there, takin’ punches.”
Does Buddy think that his fighter was slowing down?
“What do you mean?”
You remind Buddy of how his fighter started throwing fewer punches.
“Ya, but the other guy still has to throw,” Buddy says. “You have to show you still got somethin’ in there. It’s very disappointin’. The Irish kid was basically just lookin’ for a window of opportunity, and we needed to deny him that. So it is somewhat disappointin’ that we gave him that
opportunity, that the ref gave him that opportunity. We should have had a knockout victory in the fifth round.”
Has Buddy had a fight like this before?
“Not like this,” he says. “I mean, I’ve had young fighters lose before. That’s part of the game. But this was a brutal fight.”
You remember the oozing red veil over the left eye of Buddy’s man. You wonder aloud about the other fighters that lost under Buddy’s tutelage.
“Some of ‘em continued fightin’. Not all of ‘em.”
Does he recall whether he remained their trainer?
“Not for all of ‘em. Some of ‘em left me. Some of ‘em, I mean, I told some of ‘em that they should hang ‘em up.”
Hang them up?
“Y’know – quit. You have to know when it’s over.”
You pause. You ask Buddy why he chose to leave those fighters.
“What are you implyin’?”
You’re not trying to imply anything; but you are.
“I left fighters who couldn’t fight anymore, who I couldn’t help anymore.”
Is that why Buddy left his family?
“I didn’t leave my family,” Buddy says. He brings himself to his full height and stares down at you. “I told you that. I left because – you know, this is a great plan on your part, askin’ me questions like this right after we lost a fight, when I’m already upset, when my head is everywhere, tryin’ to get me to reveal more shit to you.” He stops, shrinks. “Yes, I left, okay? I left because I couldn’t be a father to Elmo no more. I couldn’t see him enough. I couldn’t be there to develop him the right way.” He lowers his shield. “But you know what? He had a good mother, she had a good job. I mean, that’s all I had when I was a kid, too. He didn’t need my help. I did just fine, and he was gonna do just fine. Or, you know, he was doin’ just fine…” He gasps. “But these kids here? These kids like that young man over there? They had nothin’. They had nothin’! They needed that attention that maybe they weren’t gettin’ back home. They needed someone to listen to ‘em, drive ‘em to tournaments, talk to ‘em, teach ‘em stuff, be there every day. And that’s what I do. I can’t see nobody doin’ that once every two weeks.” His eyes glisten. “No…damn…way.”
The Dragon Documentaries Page 4
