Sparring Frustration

As Jilberto opened up the gym door, Igor asked, "Coach coming in at 7:30?"  "He'll be here at the time he usually gets here," I said in a tone that indicated that I wasn't going make a conversation out of it.  The thing with Igor is one has to cut him off quick before he gets on a loop of talking. 

Andre One and I were doing our usual footwork drills when Igor started babbling to him.  "What is he talking about?" Andre One asked me.  "I don't know," I said wearily.  Turns out that Igor wanted to spar, but not the normal way of sparring.  Andre indulged him, and they moved around throwing very light punches a couple of rounds -- no headgear -- before Alan came in.  I don't know why Igor singled out Andre One this time.

I sparred with Andre One for four rounds.  In between one of the rounds, Igor stepped to ringside just as Alan was in the middle of giving both Andre One and I pointers.  Igor was going on about something involving getting his buddy Victor a fight.  Alan told him several times to have Victor give him a call.  Unfortunately, Igor's resistance to knowing when and how to listen led to him repeating the same questions again to Alan.  I wanted tell Igor to a) learn some manners, and b) recognize that he was interupting the coach.  But like I told Pastor Roger earlier in the week about a particularly annoying food pantry patron, sometimes it's not worth me wasting my breath snapping on someone. 

During sparring with Andre One, I became very frustrated.  Alan told me not to chase him, and to deflect his jabs, and step in with jabs of my own.  But Andre One is 28 years younger than I, and he easily avoided just about every punch I put out.  By the time I came back with anything, he had hopped away.  "Come on, Hillari!  Stop throwing half-assed punches," Alan admonished.  I wasn't throwing solid punches, but it was hard to do so.  I agreed to do a fourth round mainly because I wanted another chance to try and land something, anything during the round.  I was not successful.

I agreed to tape Andre One, using his camera, several times during the evening on Wednesday as he did various drills.  Alan took notice and told him, "Andre, you've got to get another camera person, because I need her to move around.  She may have some fights coming up."  Tommy made some jokes about me being the gym's documentarian, and both Alan and I laughed.  I don't mind doing a favor for Andre, but Alan was right.  I need as much practice as I can get. 

I have a video of Jake and Andre Two going at it for three rounds.  Unfortunately, I kept getting an error message when I tried to post it here.  Maybe I'll be able to include it in a future post.

I told Alan that he reminded me of my father when he asked for my help again in reading the attendance sheets.  Dad probably needed prescription lenses, but he wasn't going to have his eyes checked.  Nor was Dad going to use the reading glasses he had.  "Hillari, what does that say?" was a frequent request from my father to have me read something for him.  We got to Max's name on the list, and I said, "Max only came in on Monday."  "Max is probably scared to come back after what you did to him during sparring," Alan grinned.