okay listen creepy dude, just because i have a couple of tattoos, no, that doesn't mean that i want to hear your naked-bondage-lady-experience-and-subsequent-backpiece-tattoo story. that story is creepy, and you're like seventy years old. i just want to get into the bathroom and pee. please stop talking to me. no, i don't know rudy mapleton from new westminster who does tae kwon do. what the fuck kind of question is that. how are people seriously named rudy.

i hate having tattoos. the most common anti-tattoo talking point is "well they'll look silly when you're old and wrinkled !" but hey dummy, EVERYONE looks silly and wrinkled when they get old. and what a silly thing to say anyway because if you wanna see your future you may have to pay a price. because you may look in there and see how you're gonna die ! you may look in there and see what you're gonna look like when you're OLD and ROTTEN and SHRIVELED and MEAN and THROUGH !

you want a real argument against getting tattoos ? you want to get serious about stopping someone from getting tattoos ? mention all the fucking retards you'll have to talk to about tattoos. "hey bud, wherrd uhhhh.... wherrdja getcher paint ? hurrrrrrrrr.."

and i mean, there's no winning that conversation. you're not coming out on top in THAT one, are you kidding me ?! "oh, a friend of mine does my--"

"yeah man i got this one back home. pretty bitchin huh."

oh sure, yeah, totally bitchin. your quality-control-by-a-sleeping-retard tattoo is totally fucking bitchin. sure yeah man, tell me some more about it even though my body language is screaming my total disinterest in anything to do with you. oh yeah ? you've got big plans for a sleeve ? cool, i bet that'll fucking suck too ! hey here's a fun idea: why don't you take a hike, jerk.

i've been on layover in bangkok for two hours and i'm already going stir-crazy despite filling the time with eating and reading and other general debauchery. charging my ipod because for some reason it just decided not to charge when i plugged it in last night. ain't that some shit.

i'm excited to play some video games and excited to do some jiu jitsu but otherwise maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan come ON. i just ate horrendously bad soup that i paid three times what i would have for the good version back in rawai. hey fucking rubbery airport chicken and overcooked noodles: fuck you. you're bullshit. someone do me a favour and put me on a nice beach with sand so fine it feels like walking in pudding and some a them big noisy waves that crash loudly on a wall of large rocks. and the beach has an arcade and a BJJ gym. bring da mufuckin ruckus.

"knee !" i drive one in there, and follow it with an elbow. "oh heeeey." oron says, but i can tell he doesn't mean it. he drifts over and leans in the corner, arms resting on the ropes, wearing a look of concern.

"riree. why no boom-boom."

oron harassed me to fight from the first day i got here (and continued even after i agreed to it) and has been harassing me to fuck the girls for just as long.

"what ? fuck man, i dunno," i put my fists back up, hoping he will put up the pads in response. he does for a 1-2, then drops them again.

"you maybe... ladyboi ?" he asks, and smilingly points at my pink skirt-shorts. then the smile fades and he raises a serious eyebrow.

i sigh and drop my hands. "no oron, not a ladyboi," i assure him for... i have no idea at this point how many times i've assured him i'm not a ladyboi. the number is astronomical. "i'm ugly as a woman," i add helpfully.

he nods solemnly at this undeniable truth, taking this information in like a therapist looking for the heart of the problem.

"you like ladyboi." he concludes.

i feel like frustratedly dropping my hands in mock-surrender to his obtuseness, but they are already hanging lifeless from having done this just a second ago. i pick them up just so i can drop them again, a gesture that surely must have looked as silly and ineffectual as it felt.

"you like... boy ?" he asks, his brow furrowed.

"i ain't tryin to get after none of that," i tell him.

"WOT." he quips, and mugs for the camera. the live studio audience roars their approval and shouts of "ORON !" sound from various spots in the crowd. a regular bud bundy, this motherfucker.

"no." i clarify, and when his brow clears its worry i elaborate, "straight talk homie: all i want is bitches-- big booty bitches. and if i gotta choose a coast, i gotta choose the east."

"WOT." he demands again, and the crowd stomps and applauds in a frenzy of delight.

"girls ! good !"

he loses it. "THEN WHY NO BOOM-BOOM !" he slaps my shoulder hard with his thai pad and mean-mugs me. "YOU HANDSOME MAN ! YOU LOOK BRAD PITT ! WHY NO BOOM-BOOM !" i suggest to him that his comparisions might be something of a misrepresentation on the order of saying the moon and sun are the same temperature because they're both round.

all the while i'm wondering how i am supposed to explain to this guy who speaks maybe 200 words of english my concerns about the morality of coming to an extremely poor country and fucking women for moeny ? then i can't help but wonder if it's morally any less repugnant than beating up some poor part-time fighter who's fighting me for money to feed his family ? i'm not one to sit here and judge what anyone does for familial obligation/a living and i won't deny that my biases against prostitution are rooted almost entirely in cultural customs i almost entirely don't relate or subscribe to otherwise. i'm having a hard time, i don't want to say rationalizing (although that's probably the most honest word for it), but justifying to myself these differences and why one form of taking advantage of those economically depressed is morally sound while others are not (and i'm not trying to build a case to use later for seeing prostitutes)... not so easy to untangle i guess.

the whistle blew to end the round, the last on the pads. "too much talking you." oron says, and shakes his head while pointing at me. the audience laughs and someone yells "ORON !"

okay officially sick of alcohol. songkran fucking rules though and standing on its own merits, is easily the best holiday idea ever and the most fun one i've ever experienced. i seriously can't believe it's not a world-wide tradition. goddamn. best birthday ever.

the relief of having fought is even more considerable than what i imagined it would be. unburdened. in terms of improving as a fighter, the experience was vital and necessary on a level i had vastly underestimated. between the nerves and pace and competition, it really is the next level of the game. i will need to do some BJJ tournaments in the future, definitely. but for now: a couple days of pizza, booze and desserts. welcome to the party zone.

things are a lot different once you're in there.

as i said, my biggest fear was that technique would fall apart and i'd gas in a minute, and technique did go out the window to some degree. the timing and rhythm of everything felt so much different than they do sparring, and my first thought once the fight started was "hey this guy is actually trying to hurt me !" without an ounce of that ironic humour the young people nowadays like so much.

but i should start more at the start. or at the beginning of relevance at least.

it was lying on the table getting oiled up when the fear really set in.

"don't be scared homie don't be scared homie don't be scared homie" i tried mantraing at myself but even nick diaz wisdom wasn't cutting it.

i'd gotten my hands taped a half hour earlier, and sat with fede and chris distractedly watching as carlos handily dismantled his opponent. i'd felt keyed up and excited at that point.

but this fucking oil-down, christ. it burned my flesh wherever they put it, and they put it everywhere. it felt like wearing a suit made of bee stings. i had thought wolf was joking when he mentioned they gave him a little flick on the balls with it, but i remembered that wolf was no comedian just as i got the bad news. "who thought this was a good idea and why." i wondered aloud, and was greeted with a number of "WOT"s from around the table. even the studio audience understood the gravity of the situation, though, and let the fact of my fiery balls pass with only a brief outburst of laughter and hooting. gloves are tied onto my taped hands.

oh fuck, the taping. i have a half-inch thick wad of hard athletic tape on the end of each fist, locked on in a cast of gauze and more tape.

"shadowbox shadowbox," oron urged as i slid off the table. okay, i think, shadowboxing. which one is shadowboxing again. it eventually comes to me and i slide around on my oiled feet, trying to keep my balance as i throw jabs at nothing. my quads feel like they're cramping
to useless; i flex them and stretch them but they're just locked tight.

what the FUCK am i DOING alarms go off in my head. all the mental defenses i've set up in case of this eventuality:

-stay calm !
-you traveled across the world specifically for this.
-you just need to touch this guy to hurt him.
-once you get hit and are aware of the fight you'll be fine.
-YOU LOVE FIGHTING.

do nothing.

i panic a little and consider outright desertion. i've got money in my bag; there's taxis right outside. just bail man. just get out of here. no problem. walk out the door. anyone tries to stop you, BAM. right in the mouth. the contradiction of how i wouldn't think twice about popping someone in the chops for trying to stop me from running away from a fight is what saves me. i tell myself the dude i'm fighting is the only guy who's really trying to stop me from leaving tonight, so i just need to pop him one, right in the ol kisser, because this guy, i mean, what a dick, you know ?

the fight before mine is a couple of thais. dee comes to tell me it's time to go to the ring as their fight nears its time limit. as i walk down the stairs to the ring, it's not bad enough that my feet are coated in oil and my sandals don't really fit anyway. now my legs are in open revolt; my quads quiver and my calves tremble like i'm getting electrocuted. i try to hold the hand-railing, knowing full well that if i don't there's a solid chance that i'm going to go tumbling down these stairs. oh hi boxing glove, i greet the forgotten hand-encombrance, i see we're doing this the hard way.

i get to the bottom of the stairs without incident (beyond hilarious granny-driving-a-car lack of speed) somehow. i sit in a chair in my cape waiting to fight. i struggle to breathe; trying to do breathing exercises fails because i feel like i'm going to pass out every time i hold air in for even a second. i settle for just breathing as deeply and as slowly as possible.

people talk to me. it's all confusing; i don't understand what any of them say even though they're talking english. i smile and say "right." "sure." "oh yeah ?" at the times it feels appropriate to say those things. i'm encouraged that i'm able to do this right now because it means that all the years of practice have ingrained the ability and made it easy to perform while under mental strain. please fists, do the same, i say to them.

the fight ends. one thai has won a decision, the other has lost. i squishily walk to the ring, calves and quads laughing and demanding to know if this is some sort of joke. the burning of my flesh has subsided somewhat, but the skin is also curious to know if i'm kidding here.

i guess i'm not because i get into the ring.

well i mean, that's not fair.

i AM joking in a lot of ways. or at least i'm in on the joke.

this is fucking ridiculous and anyone who says otherwise is just fooling themself. i'm a man in a foreign country and i'm going to fight some guy for strange, probably comical reasons. i've never even met him for god's sake. of COURSE i'm joking.

i'm just serious as well.

i walk around the ring, stop at the corners, tell myself to fight smart but hard and to stay calm. the ref calls us to the middle, grabs both of our cups and shakes them in the traditional referee's greeting, and starts the contest.

"hey this guy is actually trying to hurt me !" i realize, as he stomps a front kick at me. the fight is fast both because of my mental state and the fact that this guy's goal is to leave me unconscious. it takes me a minute or two to get the timing and rhythm right at this speed; every time i attack him he dives into a clinch with me. after this happens a few times i'm able to time him coming in with a hook that staggers him, then drive home a knee that finishes the night.

"go over, go over," oron reminds me as he raises my hand to the crowd.

for the last month, every time i've gotten in the ring or out of the ring, oron has had me do the ol' "fall over the top rope" gag that he does after his fights. the trainers LOVE this for some reason, and laugh with hearty guffaws at its proper performance. oh yeah, only when you perform it properly-- i'll tell you something which may be surprising to you, perhaps you are unaware of slapstick comedy ? i don't know the answer to that question, so i'll just assume it's "yes i am unaware," so i'll tell you that there is a technique to this fall, just like there is a technique to anything done well. if you don't commit to it you just leave the audience cold, thinking, "who does this guy think he is, wasting my time here with his amateur-hour novelty shit." but if you dive too hard on it then you spill out into the crowd, which when you're covered in sweat and burning oil and the general grime of battle, is unacceptable apparently. plus how embarrassing and unforgivable would it be to get injured not actually in a fight, but being a fucking jerkoff directly afterward ?

"woah dude you broke your leg ? was that in your fight ??"
"uhhh... not exactly..."

so for the last month i've dedicated myself to learning this art, and i think when it comes down to it, last night, that fall is the only thing i performed with excellent technique until much later when, after getting celebration wasted, danced the night away.

i arrived at the gym today to a banner for the fights on friday.

a feeling i can only compare to a mushroom trip taking a wrong turn washed over me when i saw it; my ears started ringing and my stomach dropped away and oh god i've made a huge mistake and i'm going to get caught and everyone will know and i fucked up bad and there's no turning back now the threshold is breached and what is life anyway

it passed quickly, however. just another strange emotional response to this whole experience.

since after dinner i've been feeling a wonderful calm about this fight. i know i've put in hard work, and, victory or defeat, my only goal is to fight as hard as i can. i know i can do that, and i feel that i simply will do that because if i don't, it's the only way i can actually lose. i hope i can carry this feeling through the next two days.

this shit is rising like approaching a mountain range that seemed small and negligible from a distance but quickly takes up your entire field of vision.

i've put in the hardest two months of training i've ever done and i know i gave all i had in that time; my skill is as sharp as it can be at this point after working around injury and other constraints.

my biggest concern is getting in the ring and just having technique fall entirely apart and then gassing after a minute. i'm seriously worried about this (for a couple reasons actually-- first, i've seen it happen here a few times to better fighters than me that they just end up deserting skill and look like a glorified bar brawler; second, i haven't been able to run or skip for the last month and a half due to a badly sprained foot, and running [particularly sprints] are a huge part of my cardio conditioning) because even more than i want to win (and holy fuck do i want to win), i want to be able to fight smart when it counts.

i haven't done nearly enough sparring of kickboxing with skilled guys-- it's been a lot of kickboxing with guys not as good as me, or just sparring boxing, or doing clinch work. all of that is good and beneficial in ways, but the best thing you can do in training is replicate as closely as possible what you're actually training for, except harder, and i think i haven't done enough of that. it's too late to change now of course, so i'm doing my best not to worry about that. but here we are.

"you fight, first round, soft-soft, you know ?"
"i don't think so oron. want to win, i'm going hard."
"ok ok but train hard you ? two month. train. train hard two month, fight... one minute ? no, good fight. two round. two round hard."
"we'll see how it goes."
"ok no body," he slaps his side, "no punch body one round."
"mmm, can't promise that one oron." i can't do my boy liver punches like that. what would bas think ?
"okay ! okay... but you.. one round soft-soft. yeah ?" he smiles expectantly and raises his eyebrows, seemingly quite proud of the incredibly generous nature of his compromise.
"you no-good, dirty..." i laugh.
"WOT."
"if over first round, good !"
"no !"
"no good ?"
"no goooood ! good you win, no good fight !"
"welp,"
"no you welp !" this criticism is punctuated with a hard slap on my back and a mean look. "one round soft-soft ! two round ok, KO, but one round, fight soft you ! no hard one round ! two round KO, three round KO, ok ! ROUND ONE SOFT-SOFT !!"
"first round KO ok !" i suggest, then add, "good even." i reach deep into my smile bag for my most disarming and charming smile. oh no, it's missing ! guess i'll settle for a smug and dickish smile ? pretty much the same right ?
"you stay." oron says, fuming, and storms purposefully out into the hitting-stick field.

i bought an ipod after i killed my other one by thinking it would be cool to take it out for a bike ride in a torrential downpour that was so bad i started collecting pairs of animals for an ark. okay honesty time, i just thought about elephants and squids and said AWWWWWWWW a bunch. anyways i killed my ipod and i bought this replacement ipod so i could listen to essence of the northern fists before my fight and it is such a hilariously bad piece of shit that i have to believe it's an intentional malicious joke. check out this list of awesome features:

-is not recognized by itunes
-files must be drag & dropped like a memory stick
-will not take more than 50 files at a time
-sometimes rejects all the files
-sometimes rejects some of the files, leaving me unsure which were accepted
-will not charge with ipod wall charger
-sometimes doesn't charge through computer
-cannot customize any settings
-does not acknowledge band names or albums (all songs are by "unknown artist" from "unknown album")
-has battery life of 7-11 house-brand AA cells
-sometimes scrolls down when i'm not touching it (the only time the scrolling works)
-fast forwards songs it doesn't like when it's halfway through them
-has no shuffle
-cuts the volume in half directly after i turn the volume up
-turns off just because

and i want to be mad about this but its sense of comic timing is just so good that i can't. also i paid like $80 for it and just need it to play songs for an hour on fight day. but now i keep expecting to wake up and find it setting up ponzie schemes and then posting on stormfront about racial purity under my name.

yeah definitely getting irritable. definitely need to fight.

the grind of training twice a day for over two months (minus injury time, which, the entirety of the time off was maybe a week and a half, and it was spent thinking about fighting and wishing to be fighting) without having an outlet of a fight, or a decisive ending without going home to fucking real life, is leaving me short with people and generally irritable. this is the aspect of myself i dislike the most and the one i'm least able to control. i've got something of a temper at times but i can mostly keep it under wraps; at least nine out of ten of the people i've ever met deserved an absolutely savage beating but i never savagely beat them which can only speak to my impressive temper-control and general worth as a man.

anyways basically i think i should probably fight. my foot is still a mess and improving at a very, very slow pace, but if i give it a few weeks before fighting (and don't re-injure or new-injure myself) i should hopefully be ready to go.

wish someone had warned me beforehand that it was "clownings and savage beatings of the farangs" day so i could've just gone to one class instead of somehow volunteering for a "two vicious beatdowns in one day" day

i mean i normally like to have at least a short nap between assaults

apparently i somehow involuntarily signed up for another go with with sing on friday too, so pretty fucking sweet to get clobbered by a k1 vet three times in one week

boxed with sing today. what a ridiculous monster, he had reflexes like i've never even seen before. as always with the thais, the first round went great for me; i'm so smooth, landing shots, generally looking like i have any idea whatsoever what i'm doing. second round starts and he has my entire game figured out already, slipping and moving around every punch i throw, then countering with ridiculous timing and accuract. dude started completely clowning me with roy jones jr hands-down-chin-out nonsense and i felt like i technically should be mad ? but he was so adorable and fun-loving about it that i couldn't help laughing along with him.

anyways long story short he beat the living shit out of me for the next some number of rounds that i can't honestly be expected to remember in my current state

back at training for a few days now. i don't move well at all and there's a bunch of shit i can't do on my foot, but i also can't sit around anymore either, so i put up with the annoyance of crippled training sessions and feeling like a pussy for not sparring or clinching. and i fucking hate saying "nah i can't do that," to the trainers because they think you're just being difficult or a drama queen or whatever. argh. hope this shit heals fast.

i hate to take sleeping pills, but it's one of the sacrifices you have to make sometimes when you have to start training at 6am but your body tells you to go to sleep at 4am. i got some from the pharmacy a few weeks ago but have avoided using them until last night, knowing i was going to be getting up early to try to get back at least some level of fight cardio, even if i can't do a lot of the exercises.

insomnia is a funny thing. i can be utterly exhausted while running on very little sleep from the night before and still be totally unable to sleep. the closest thing i can compare it to is if you've ever had a muscle cramp that won't let go, that's what my brain feels like. at some point in the night i can feel my brain release its squeeze, and then i can finally go to bed and sleep instead of looking around my room in frustration, focusing on the shadowy right angles of corners until my eyes cross.

sleeping pills shorten or sidestep this period one way or another. some make me feel like i'm sinking slowly deeper into fatigue as my body gets heavy until i am almost conscious of crossing the threshold of sleep, like walking down a nearly level beach into the water. others i won't feel a thing; i'll be lying in bed wide awake wondering when the drug will kick in and then BAM it's morning.

these pills were different than that; i took one around 8pm thinking i would be falling asleep by nine at the latest. eleven o'clock found me lying in bed staring into corners cross-eyed in frustration when suddenly it began to look like coloured veils were being put in front of my line of sight. i shut my eyes but even the darkness went through various shades. i chased the veils across the backs of my eyelids until they floated away over a hillside i recognized from dreamland. i clearly remember feeling relieved in my dream that i was asleep.

so after training this morning (which i thankfully survived without further foot damage and only a moderate sleeping pill hangover) i checked online to see what sort of potency those sleeping pills were, thinking maybe i needed something stronger or at least different. welp, turns out "alprazolam" is xanax ! hahaha this fucking country rules...

ok old lady look.

maybe i look like a soft-touch; the kind of guy who you pull one of your scams on back home in venice. i don't know, i can't speak to that.

but listen: i clearly arrived at this toaster first. why are you trying to bully your piece of toast into the toaster when my bread is entirely already in it. your bread doesn't fit. this is a simple IF THEN situation. IF toaster has guy1 putting bread1 in it THEN don't try to put bread2 in it.

hey elderly woman. i don't have time to stand around smirking about the fact that you're baffled by technology to the point that a toaster is leaving you making faces like it asked you to resolve the collatz problem. i need to fill my plate with calories for my big day of lying by the pool with my sun-shades on.

say, is that sushi ? why, i daresay it is... perhaps i'll have a piece or two ? who can say for sure... the future stays unknown to all men, but i can't deny having clouded, shocking visions of a world where i'm stuffing that sushi into my face...

it feels so real...

{the toaster popping snaps me out of my trance and i wipe the cold sweat from my brow and try to catch my breath, hoping to avoid the fatigue the foodvisions sometimes lay upon me. i needn't have worried though, as a fire was about to be ignited in my blood.}

oh, excuse me, fucking old lady, but that toast you're putting on your plate like it's fucking yours or something ?

dude seriously ? are you fucking aiming to get brutally fucking TKO'd ? this one is NOT going to a decision you wrinkled horror i ASSURE you. while it is normally quite beyond my nature as a gentleman to clobber an old lady with my steel fists and then dance in circles around her like she's the sweet corner maid, you are balancing precariously on the fine line between my menacing, trembling rage and the point where they are going to have to pull me off you after i unleash a savage combination that buries my balled fists up to the elbows into your leathered about-to-be-dead-even-sooner-than-you-thought-it-would-be body.

i'm looking through your eyes directly into your soul, withered shuffling lady, and i can see you don't have the heart it takes to defeat me. sure you might stick and move for a few minutes. and though you may try to frustrate me with slick footwork while landing a few nice combinations, eventually i will corner you between the salad bowl and the sausage tray and then i will end your breakfast in absolutely bestial fashion with two hits: me hitting you, and then me hitting up the buffet again for another helping of bangkok stir-fry.

oh you don't like that i'm in your grill like it's 2003 and i'm mirko filipovic and you're wearing a lucha libre mask ? well maybe then i could suggest a compromise wherein you put my fucking toast on my goddamned plate and i don't paint this buffet with your blood even though it goes against every natural fiber of my being to offer you probably the sweetest deal you'll ever get in what's surely guaranteed to be a very short rest of your life, with or without my intervention ?

the FUCK you mean "oh are these yours." you watched me put that bread in the fucking toaster you ridiculous walking corpse. don't mumble to your other sagging animated-dead pal in your zombie language ! you can voluntarily surrender the toast immediately onto my plate or prepare yourself for a very short career as a heavy bag and then i take the toast anyway and probably fashion a championship belt out of it. yeah, the plate on the table with the huge stack of pancakes. i had to set it down to do do a wanderlei wrist roll.

i'm torn between the frustration and curious guilt of not training and deeply enjoying lying in the sun reading for hours on end without a care in the world, sliding into the pool and cruising around in three dimensions, then back to my pool chair for some big time relaxation...

i do want desperately to get back at it; i've shocked myself out of sleep shadowboxing the last two nights but the reason i'm out right now is because i hurried back too fast in the first place. so i'm taking it slow, hoping to get back to at least doing some pad and bag work by monday.

also i've spent the last week eating like i'm still training twice a day. haha uhh, whoops

wang: do the saenchai kick !
me: yeah the saenchai kick, that's a really good idea, do the saenchai kick !

(the saenchai kick:
)

which, of course, i land with my foot, on his elbow, and when i come down my foot sings in agony. cool idea !
and i just paid for a month of training this morning. cool to be back on the bench again while that money just drains away with my fucking time in thailand and i can't even fucking walk.

this shit man, seriously. i finally get back to sparring, i'm finally kicking again, and BAM. take a seat, johnny.

so i went to the pharmacy to get more celebrex and asked if they had any pain killers.

"how bad pain ?"
"well i can't really walk so much as do some terry fox shit."
"... ?"
"pretty bad."
"ok these prescription only. you be careful."

cool security measures thailand. i should've asked if they had any opium.

there's a fight night every friday in patong, on sundays quite often as well, sometimes mondays and wednesdays. i've been to seven or eight of them so far but tonight's was special. it was a fight night put on by sinbi gym, so five of the ten fights were with sinbi fighters. it was great to watch; there's always a large group of people from sinbi who go to watch the fights, but with so many sinbi fighters on the card, the sinbi section was absolutely packed.

i got there about twenty minutes late and i had already missed three fights ! all first and second round knockouts, two for sinbi fighters. everyone was in good spirits because of this, naturally, but there was a definite nervous energy because there were still three more fights for sinbi to go.

watching a teammate lose is depressing and draining in a way that is untranslatable, particularly if you've sparred with them or grown close to them. last week, the main event was a guy from the gym named shane, a big, well-liked 240lb fellow. he was fighting another big guy, and right from the start it was a hard-fought war. shane's opponent was landing some good punches, but shane was going to work on the guy's lead leg with kicks that were adding up. shane was dropped in the second round but showed a ton of heart getting back to his feet and fighting into the third, and even looked like he was starting to out-work his opponent when he landed a punch awkwardly and injured his shoulder. i don't even know the guy well and it was incredibly deflating; you want your teammates to win so badly, especially in the brotherhood of shared hard effort. watching someone work so hard but come up short is ugly stuff and i can only imagine how much more difficult it was for the people actually close to him.

i've sparred with the three guys who still had fights to come; kion, who i don't know well but enjoyed working with and respected a good deal, brendan, a thoughtful australian who's laid back and very friendly but with a piercing scrutiny who works very hard, and oron. the idea of any of watching any of these guys lose makes my stomach twist uncomfortably, but they're all talented guys and i'm confident in all three of them.

brendan's fight is first. he fights a thai man who abuses brendan's leg with kicks; brendan wades through them for the first round and a half, then lands a fight-ending flurry of punches. i'm excited and relieved to see him win; brendan's a good dude and he worked hard for this.

oron's fight is a very thai affair; slow, technical and patient. oron slides into the pocket smoothly to throw more hand combinations than one usually sees from a thai fighter, but he is also active enough with his legs and lands good knees from the clinch that the judges won't penalize him (they don't like boxing !). his opponent is overmatched the entire fight and never really mounts much of an offense, and oron doesn't abuse him for it. oron takes a one-sided decision and the cheers are loud and delighted for the much-beloved trainer.



the next fight features nobody from sinbi but is easily the best fight i've seen at bangla so far; an absolute tooth and nail battle that more than anything is a display of tenacity and heart. the technique is just magnificent and they are throwing counters to counters to counters. the level of skill on display from both fighters is immeasurable and the crowd appreciates the performance with waves of applause and shouting. neither man hits the floor despite the absolutely vicious nature of the contest, and while one man was declared the winner it would be absolutely backward to call the other a loser.

kion enters the ring and prepares to fight the last fight of the night. his opponent is a brit; he's relaxed and composed. traditionally the last fight of the night at these events is a squash match where one opponent grossly outmatches the other and is just putting in some ring time.

this was not the case here. from the opening bell it is a case of kion's aggressive boxing vs. the movement & heavy kicks of the brit. kion eats a number of leg kicks and mostly defends himself with smiles and nods at his opponent. he's definitely game but solidly outpointed in the first round.

in the second his boxing begins to get a little wild; lots of power but less tight. the brit uses the clinch a lot and lands some good elbows. near the end of the frame kion eats a vicious shot and his legs go stiff, he takes a couple of awkward steps but manages to stay vertical, covering up well as his opponent attempts to capitalize.

kion's survival gets everyone in the crowd going and the excitement in our section becomes a physical thing; heavy and electric like the air here gets in an afternoon thunderstorm. at the start of the third kion presses forward relentlessly and his heart for battle is incredibly inspiring. he wears down his opponent landing good strikes and beginning to out-muscle him in the clinch. the brit is staggered and kion throws him to the mat where the referee waves off the fight. i've never felt the level of infectious enthusiasm sinbi showed as its fighters went undefeated, showing both technique and incredible heart.