White-collar, my arse!

I am a clerk. I have a long, inscrutable job title, but I am basically a clerk. You couldn't get much more white collar than me. I am not really very hard. My hands are soft like a muppet's hands and when someone bumps into me I apologise six times. In theory, white-collar boxing means I should fight someone a bit like me, but it turns out I will be fighting the guy in this picture below (I've copied it from the Facebook site promoting the event).

He is probably a highly paid IT consultant, but he looks pretty hard to me. Not because he has tats and isn't wearing a shirt - though that's pretty hard - it's because he looks like he's spent some portion of life not worrying about his head. I don't mean he's not handsome or anything, he just looks like he might have played rugby and possibly broken his nose a few times. This means he's more accepting of pain. And his head looks solidly joined too his body. I don't think mine is. I think my head would fall off first, if it was to come to that.

It won't come to that. Boxing is pretty safe. Well, not all boxing, but I think they stop these fights pretty quick if it gets ugly. And I've won the expectations game; no one will expect me to win, and if I lose, people will think I was brave just to get in the ring with him.

But that's about as good as it gets at the moment. This thing is totally out of control.

Fatliness

A person is made up of many things, but some of it is fat. Even very skinny people have some fat. Former NSW Premier and skinny person Bob Carr recently blogged that since giving up alcohol he had reduced his body fat from 19 to 13 per cent, 'measured by scanning.' According to the internet, that's about as much fat as a healthy male athlete has (women are allowed to have a bit more fat).

I've always suspected Bob Carr thinks alot about his fat - his blogg is called 'Thoughtliness'.  I'm not saying you should wait until you look like Manuel Uribe (below) before you give it some thought.  But I think the ranges Bob is talking about are pretty low, and probably not worth the stress. I also think some people conceal their misanthropic tendencies through fat-hate. Love the fatty, hate the fat? I don't buy it.

Above average levels: Mexico's Manuel Uribe

I have no basis in science for saying that. And perhaps when some of my alcoholic friends start getting diabetes and other fat sicknesses, I may take a more forensic approach to my own fat.

In the meantime, I am continuing with my long-standing approach to fat, which is to engage in periodic bursts of intensive, inappropriate, and potentially lethal exercise. It doesn't really work because I don't change my diet, but it does make me feel better about overeating.

I have lost some fat, training for this fight, but not as much as you'd expect. And at this age, having carried a bit of fat for a while, it comes off the body in a very uneven way, and you are not the old shape you remembered.  For example, I have quite a big arse, and it has stayed big while the rest of me has gotten a bit smaller. And there are other loose bits of fat that look like they've been stuck to me as an afterthought.

It doesn't really bother me. My training is going quite well.

Pie Eaters

Just under five weeks to go now. I signed up for this thing in August but they reckon 6 weeks is the optimum training time leading up to a fight, so long as you're not a pie-eater.  I was a bit of a pie-eater so I started training sort of hard a few weeks ago. I've been mucking about with pads and bags for a couple of years.

A 'pie-eater' is not a technical term, just short-hand for someone who is not in reasonable shape. So you can be pie-eater and only eat sausage-rolls. I got out of shape from eating different kinds of salty, meat things and alcohol.

I mention this because when I asked one of my trainers about my opponent he said they're not yet allowed to give details but that 'he won't be a pie eater.'  That's all I know about him. He has a reasonably balanced diet. They don't give away anymore information this far out because they want to be careful not to give either boxer the upper hand.

This means I am free to make up stuff about my opponent. I can then use this make-believe person as motivation to help me endure the unending drudgery that is boxing training.

Most sports are about beating someone else, or a group of other people. Some sports are very rough and physical. But because in boxing you really do have to punch someone else, it would seem obvious that you would want to punch someone who made you cross.

Maybe that works for some people. It isn't working for me. There are lots of people I'm cross with, but it seems I'm not cross with anyone enough to make me jog; a good learning, but not yet enough to make this experience rewarding.

There's a lot on the internet about the psychology of boxing. I've read this article, which takes the line that boxing is 99 per cent psychological. You can say things like this about boxing and everyone is fine with it.

Why is that?

You never hear rowers say, 'Rowing is 99 per cent psychological'. That's because most people would say, 'Nope, I think rowing is about 99 per cent rowing.'

But I think it's mostly because people know that boxing is actually 100 per cent fucking mental and the psychological dimensions are quite easy to grasp: you could get beat up in front of lots of people even though you wanted them to come and watch. All vanity and humiliation with fear the prime motivator. Proper boxers are meant to get a handle on it, but fear is the only thing really motivating me at the moment. I'm a bit spewing.