White-collar warrior

An out-of-shape writer is shown the ropes at Jabb Gym

By Ross Kennerly

“You don’t walk out of the woods a fighter, you have to be schooled.”
— Harry Crews, The Knockout Artist

Man, that hurt. That loud crack you just heard (or maybe it was just in my head) wasn’t my gloved fist hitting the mitt, but my elbow hyper-extending. First punch I throw I hurt myself. Real manly.

“You hurt?” Luis Ramos, my trainer, asks me seriously, dropping his maws for a second.

“No, I’m okay,” I say, shaking it off and putting my dukes back up.

Not true. Elbow hurting.

I am not a fighter. I’ve never thrown a punch and meant it, never stood toe-to-toe in a fist-fight, never even put on a pair of boxing gloves. This isn’t good. Part of being a man is knowing that you could go heels if someone, say, disrespected your girlfriend and you were forced to defend her honor. Sounds clichéd, but it’s the ultimate male fantasy. I’ve been able to avoid that situation thus far by relying on size and something Hemingway once said, about knowing you could kill someone if you had to and how others will see that in you and leave you alone — but it’s all a facade. I am untested.

Round One

The first thing I notice as I walk into Jabb Boxing is a little, white, fluffy dog, which cocks its head at me and wags its tail as I approach the counter. The second thing I notice is a glossy photograph of Andrei “The Pitbull” Arlovski, standing flexed and battered and bleeding, the golden UFC championship belt resting square on his hips. In the center of the wooden floor are two boxers-in-training, hands wrapped, shadow-boxing in looping, pendulous arcs that, in repetition, I believe, point in the direction of the poles. Or maybe they are like the converging circles of the Aztec calendar, aligning every 52 years, which in boxing years would be 25 past their prime.

The picture in question is hanging amid others in the clutter of former and current clients on a who’s-who of Jabb bulletin board. The dog in question belongs to Dominic Pesoli, promoter and president of Eight Count Promotions and partner at Jabb with his lifelong friend, Michael “The Fly” Garcia. Dominic rattles through the fighters’ names and histories off the top of his head in no particular order: pro Fernando Vargas; Kendall Gill, former Chicago Bull, who has trained here and turned pro after leaving the NBA; he gets to the photograph I can’t stop staring at and says simply that Arlovski’s a bad man. Bad as in could-beat-your-ass-senseless-if-you-thumbed-your-nose-at-him. I mean, there is literally a piece of skin hanging off of the left side of his forehead.

I was supposed to meet a couple of guys here — friends of a friend — who take Jabb’s Thursday-night Adult Boxing Training Camp. Both of them swear it’s the best workout they’ve ever had. However, it’s six o’clock and neither of them has shown up. I know one by face and one by name, so as men with low-slung gym bags and lowered eyes file in through the metal door, I keep one eye on the entrance and one on the sign-up sheet. I recognize no one.

The orbiting fighters have started to dance away from the center of the room now that the class members are falling in line. They seem serene and self-confident. Game-faced. They begin to loosen up by shadow boxing to their reflection in three wall mirrors that run half the length of the room. I explain to Dominic my situation, and that I had planned to take the free introductory class — but he corrects me, saying that it’s not free, but $15 for the trial session. Coming straight from work, I had changed into wind pants in the car, which I parked next to a cab station across Oakley Ave. I only have a couple of bucks on me — which, in retrospect, is moronic — and they’re both in my jeans. In the car.

I ask Dominic if instead there is some sort of one-on-one class I could take instead of the group class, which has already started its calisthenics: Michael, at point with his back to the mirror, barks out a 10-count while they do push-ups. Dominic says sure, and whips out a price list. It’s $50 instead of $15, and he tells me the group class, when bought in a package, is actually cheaper, working out to about 15 bucks a class. I don’t care: 50 bucks is worth me not making a complete ass out of myself.

“I don’t know anything about boxing,” I blurt nervously.

“Most of the guys that come here the first time don’t,” Dominic shrugs, without looking up.

“Hey, Luis!” he hollers. Luis, in a tank-top doing wide-grip push-ups at the head of the class next to Michael, pops up and walks toward us back through the ranks doing forward circles, doing reverse circles, loosening up their shoulders. Luis is a head shorter than I am and about 75 pounds lighter. His hair is short, salt-and-pepper and a tad unkempt. And he doesn’t walk over so much as prowl.

Luis and I set a time for the next day, Friday, at 6:00, same time and place. I shake Luis’s hand, which feels tight, but not rough — a fighter’s hand. I ask him if he’s a pro.

“No, man,” he says looking away from me. “Used to be.”

Dominic laughs. “He’s too old to be a pro, man.”

Dominic has a weigh-in with one of his “stable,” as he calls the group of about 20 fighters he promotes, so he has to go. I ask him for his card, and he turns toward his office, a windowed room in the kitty-corner of a raised podium that makes up the east end of the studio and houses the free weights. There is an identical room on the other side of the podium, brightly lit by a little chandelier, directly behind the cockapoo or whatever it is that’s still staring at me cockeyed.

“Hey!” Dominic barks over the din, pointing to the office. “This way.” Then he whistles and waves at the dog.

Round Two

“You Ross?” Luis asks while walking up to me the next night, hand outstretched. “Luis. I’m your man.”

He directs me to a nook with a row of lockers and a bench, obscured from the front door by one of the walls of the studio, where I can stow my bag and jacket. Underneath I’m wearing a cutoff Marine Corps shirt, a piece of borrowed bad-ass I took from my father.

“Hey, alright, Marines!” Luis says as I re-enter the studio. “OOH-RAH!”

My father, I explain.

“Oh your dad,” Luis says, visibly disappointed. “You got your wraps?”

My what?

“Your wraps,” he says, pointing at his knuckles. I look around: everyone’s fists are bound. Oh. I didn’t know I needed any, I shrug.

Jabb sells wraps for $10 at the front counter, but Luis borrows some from Dominic, whose head I can see watching me from inside his office. Another class is about to start, so Luis guides me over to yet another mirror on the other side of the room, across from the heavy bags like upside-down cattails dangling from the rafters.

Luis asks me if I am right- or left-handed. Right, I say. He tells me to hold out my right hand parallel to the floor and spread my fingers. He hooks a loop at one end of the wrap around my outstretched thumb and begins to meticulously weave the cloth around my hand. While he wraps, Luis tells me that he was on a boxing team for the Marine Corps, having signed up at 19 after dropping out of high school, but that he earned his GED in the service. I find out that he joined the Marines about the same time my father retired, which Luis tells me was also after they changed the G.I. Bill — disallowing drill instructors to touch their recruits. He never saw action and rarely put on a uniform; all he did, according to him, was eat, sh-- and box. He says my father is Old Corps.

He casts both hands identically: the hand is open as the cloth is wound around the knuckles, then balled into a tight fist when it’s wrapped around the wrist. Luis has the concentrated frown of a surgeon, gently ordering my fingers splayed or fisted. Like everything else in boxing, even wrapping has a cadence. A measured, disciplined speed. I am flattered at how much care he takes in preparing my hands, but I guess in this sport, your hands are your life. Or, more appropriately, your weapons for battle.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first.

My class starts with one round of toe-touches — a four-count equaling one rep — reaching as far forward and as far between my legs as I can. The count is called out by Luis, who does the exercises beside me, although he’s been doing them since 8:00 this morning. He does this for every one his clients. At the end of each rep, Luis rights himself and hammers his fists on his hips.

“One-two-three-ONE! One-two-three-TWO!”

The numeral at the end of the four-count is a guttural pop, spoken like “Hah!” I mimic Luis, pounding on my waist. Except I get a little too into it, and on about the sixth “Hah!” I accidentally clap my hands. Idiot. Luis doesn’t notice, thank God.

“Bet your daddy knows how to do these,” Luis says to my reflection after we finish. “You know how to do squat-thrusts?”

Oh, do I.

After pounding out 10 squat-thrusts, we do mountain-climbers, then jumping jacks, behind-the-head stretches and that forward-circle, reverse-circle exercise I saw the day before. Finally, Luis has me clasp my hands reverse-grip in front of me and raise each knee across my torso to the opposite elbow. Only, Chubby here can’t get his knee that high. First I whiff miserably, then I start cheating, bending down. But I still keep missing. I look at Luis’s reflection beside me, and he is simply rotating at the waist, his torso a rigid trunk. I suddenly realize I’m dancing the can-can. I might as well kick my leg.

Luis must have noticed me sucking wind, because he stops for a moment to show me how to breathe properly — always in through the nose. He scrunches his face into a grimace with each inhale.

“Even if it make you look ugly,” he says, “You got to breathe.”

Buzz. Every exercise in Jabb’s classes starts and ends with a series of shrill beeps. All motion in the room is synched with these synthesized bells. On cue, Luis pulls me closer to the mirror, and tells me to shadow box. Only I don’t know how to shadow box. Luis shows me how to stand, left foot pointed toward your opponent (in this case, my reflection), right foot staggered behind me. I put up my fists.

“This one keeps them off of you,” he says, clasping a hand over my left fist, “and this one” — tapping the right fist — “knocks them out.”

Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Luis teaches me to throw a jab by rotating my left elbow, rather than swinging it. This allows your fist to come straight from the shoulder to their face. Then, to throw a right, pull back the left fist to your chin and bring the right around all the way from that back foot. I throw a couple quick one-two combos at myself in the mirror. Good, Luis says. Now move around a little.

I start hopping around like (I think) Stallone would, but I’m a complete disaster. I’m not even as good as Rocky’s son with that weird earring in Rocky V. My arms are too close to my sides, and every time I throw I feel like I am going to fall over. My one-two punch happens between hops, always after landing on my front foot with my right leg flailing around somewhere behind me. Hop, hop, one-two. Hop, hop, one-two. I’m dancing again. I laugh at how ridiculous I look.

Before we go into the ring, Luis teaches me one last punch: the hook. This is by far my favorite punch. Its placement comes after I throw the right, and I take all that momentum I’ve generated and put it behind my left fist as I pull the right back to my chin. I’ve never thrown a punch with my whole body before, and that’s exactly what the hook is. I envision catching my opponent in the side of the head. If you landed one of these in a street fight, you would kill someone. Something clicks, and I’m not laughing at myself anymore.

Buzz.

Luis ambles over to what looks like a weight tree and pulls a couple of red, 16-ounce gloves off of its arms. Like wrapping my hands, he puts the right glove on first. As the Velcro takes hold, I realize that I don’t have hands anymore. I have clubs. I also observe, to my surprise, that my hands are open inside each mitt. I don’t know what I thought before that would cause me to be surprised; I guess I thought every fighter had a little fist balled up inside their glove somewhere. I’m loose. I’m comfortable.

This is what a boxing glove feels like.

Luis wipes my sweaty face with a warm towel, shoots some water from a bottle into my mouth, which dribbles out of the corners and mixes in with the perspiration. He steps up onto the mat and holds the ropes open with his body so I can climb through. I see in the mirror that I look like a lobster, but that’s not funny right now. You’re not a writer, you’re a killer, I tell myself. OOH-RAH. Luis holds up his mitt and says, “Left.”

I pound my gloves together and jab. And throw out my elbow.

Round Three

Luis says the only difference between the personal training session and the class is more one-on-one attention. And boy, does he dole it out. After a few minutes in the ring, my elbow loosens up a little bit, but my shoulders start to ache. Boxing gloves are a lot heavier than I thought. Sure, they’re only a pound apiece, but put a little mustard on them and throw them around a hundred times. A couple of times I almost take Luis’ head off when he simply says “Left” and drops the mitt, but I throw the right anyway because I’m not listening, absorbed by the swirl of movement (like the other boxers, we’re circling each other), his rhythmic cadence and the staccato popping of glove-on-mitt. He doesn’t flinch, or even blink, even though my right just grazed his ear. He only says, “No, just left.” This is the composure of a man who has had a lot of punches thrown at him.

Luis turned pro after the Marine Corps, but retired at 36, while, as he puts it, he still had all of his marbles. He also says his record wasn’t that good. I ask him what a bad record is, and he shrugs and says, “More losses than wins.” Touché. He also says he doesn’t care for Ultimate Fighting; in boxing, all he has to worry about are shoulders and fists. I mention the photograph of the bloody “Pitbull” Arlovski, and he waves me off.

“No, they do that to him, man,” he says of the doctored picture. “Real fighter take one or two beatings like that and they’re out.”

After I can’t lift my arms anymore, Luis sprays some more water in my mouth and lets me out of the ring, taking me over to the heavy bag. This is where I have one brief, shining moment: Luis has to hold the bag for me, because every time it swings back toward me I jam my elbow when I jab. I land two solid hooks that shake the bag.

“That’s it right there,” Luis nods. “That’s the f---ing hook right there. You even had me duckin’ on that one.”

Yeah, ducking because I have no control.

But it was not to last. Directly following the heavy bags, Luis takes off the now heavy gloves, and I move to the speed bag. My shoulders are too tired to lift my arms, so I paw at it for three minutes, noticing what looks a like a large spray pattern of blood next to me on the wall. Luis tells me later that he thinks it’s varnish.

“1-2-3, 1-2-3,” Luis says, trying to be encouraging. But even he leaves for a few minutes.

So let’s fast forward to where I puke. Or almost puke.

Luis finishes out the class with sit-ups. He says that normally he makes the fighters go for 25, but since it was my first time, he only makes me do three sets of 10. Gee, thanks. Thirty sit-ups and a pulled hip flexor later, I’m lying flat on my back drooling sweat all over the mat. I look up at the clock. 7 p.m. No kidding.

“Hey Dominic,” Luis, standing triumphantly over me, says to the boss who happens to be walking by, “I killed him!”

Dominic grins. Normally I would protest, but he’s right. I’m dead. Luis pulls me up off the mat. I do one quick set of back extensions on the circuit, and that’s it. Toasted. Fried. Pick your adjective.

“Now you know what to expect,” Luis says, shaking my hand. “Just remember, next time you come in here … you’re mine.”

I’m not thinking about how he took it easy on me. I’m not thinking about how embarrassing it is to be this out of shape in a room full of featherweights. I’m thinking that if I don’t sit down, I’m going to barf all over this gym. I sit on the podium steps and slowly unravel my cloth casting. But it’s no good. Serious toxins are pouring out of my body. I go in the bathroom, sit down and let the sweat roll off me.

See you next Thursday. Buzz.

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