Amy's Last Night

About thirteen people showed up at the gym for the start of the Summer session.  I think that's the largest amount of people that have signed up for that particular session in a long time.  When Alan came in, he commented that I was the only familiar face among the crowd.  I was for a moment until Amy, Sarah, and Franco came in.  Franco hadn't been there in some time, and he had his brother Tony with him.  Taheerah, who hadn't been there in about two years, signed up again.  I saw another familiar name on the list, Sara, whom I had knocked out awhile back during a sparring session.  But Sara did not come in that evening.  Also, Marcus came in.  "If all the regulars had come in tonight, this place would have been very packed," Alan said.

Neither Sarah nor her sister Amy were going to spar.  It wouldn't look good for either of them to have bruises or black eyes as they had to look good for Amy's wedding photos.  It was Amy's last time in the gym as her nuptials are approaching very soon.  Her husband-to-be is Canadian, and she will be moving to his country after the ceremony.  She and her sister did something very nice.  They gave both Alan and I coach's jackets as gifts.  The name of the gym is on the back of them, and on the front is "Coach".  They are very sharp!  I had been thinking about getting a coach's jacket for the longest, so that gift was very appreciated.  I will include a picture of my jacket in a later post.  I will miss seeing Amy at the gym.

Alan and I thought it would a good idea to show the new people what sparring looks like.  He wore Kevin's old headgear, and I used my own.  It was three hard rounds.  Alan popped me dead in the face during one round when both my hands were down.  My left eye took a beating when another punch came in.  I caught him several times with right hooks, and managed to get one left hook in to Alan's head.  Then I got him in the side with more right hooks.  Alan banged me with an overhand right once, and I took a blow to the body that took some of the wind out of me.  We were in the corner during another moment, and Alan was pelting me with blows until I thought to spin out of the corner.  I fell twice, slipping once, and the other fall due to a body punch.  The first time Alan tried to help me up off of the canvas took some doing.  Then I realized that I needed to help him by making more of an effort to push myself up.  It wasn't easy to do because my knees didn't want to do the work.

Later in the evening, Alan grinned that the "two old people" sparred to show people how it's done, yet we were "huffing and puffing", which was true.  I told Alan we both were probably going to need Epsom salt and rubbing alcohol later on.

Hopefully, Kenny will come in on Wednesday.  One of the new guys (the guy in the foreground of the above photo), whose name escapes me at the moment, has Thai boxing experience.  He was working the bags pretty well.  Kenny and the guy are about the same weight, so it'll be a good match up.

Amanda (in the above photo) was wearing a shirt that advertised a south suburban boxing club.  I think she was the only new woman who showed up with a pair of her own gloves.  She also appeared to be the only one among the new women in the session who has some experience with the sport.

In this photo, Alan gives some advice to Pedro, another new person.  Some of the names of the other new people are Matt and John.  Eventually, I will remember names of everybody.

I was telling Alan that I read about a fight between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen in the 1940's.  Benny and Allen had a running gag going on their respective radio shows that involved the two men hurling insults at each other.  They were so good at "playing the dozens" that audiences thought the guys were enemies for real, but in real life, they were friends.  But the "feud" demanded a climax, so the comedians had a real boxing match that was done for the benefit of Army War Relief.  It lasted three rounds and was declared a draw.  Benny said in his biography, "I do not think that either Fred Allen or myself had the strength or technical skill to knock out a bee, even a common ordinary worker bee."