Now you just back off ... please!

Skulls are hard. Most people will never find out just how hard they are. The Wikipedia entry for the human skull says that it takes a force of one tone to reduce the diameter of a skull by 1 cm. As a boy, I would routinely bang my skull against hard surfaces and more than once used it to break a fall. It really is quite robust. With a good mouth guard and head gear, you really have nothing to fear from someone trying to hit you with 16 ounce gloves.

Just the same, I found getting punched hard in the face hugely distressing.

Nothing can prepare you for the real violence of an actual fight. Even the most intense sparring sessions don't get anywhere near it. So when I took a big shot in the opening seconds of the fight, my first thought was something like: 'What the Devil's happening here then!' This guy was fairdinkum trying to bash me up and I felt put out.

I know this doesn't make sense. I had, after all, spent over two month preparing to punch someone as hard as I could. I wasn't entitled to be shocked, let alone upset.

But my response was quite normal. Rory Miller, author of several books about violence reckons it takes 'multiple encounters to figure out what's going on and where you fit in the Looking-Glass world of violence.' The first times are very confusing. Miller again:

When humans go under extreme stress ... they get a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that greatly affect how they perceive, think and move

Yes. In fact, I think I remember the exact moment the cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters started to greatly affect me because I fell over. In my head it was all going horribly wrong.

The reality wasn't so bad.  I worked my jab enough to stay in the fight - just - and I've been told it was a decent enough contest up to the point he punched both contact lenses out of my eyes.

The loss of the first didn't bother me, not against the bother I felt at being killed in front of friends and family. I only realised the other had come out when I went to my corner at the end of the second round. Once my trainer knew, the fight was over. People involved in violent sports are paradoxically fanatical about safety.

In the days that followed, I put on a brave face, but I was really confused.

This wasn't my first violent encounter, but it was the longest, for sure -- I remember the panicked disbelief I felt in the opening seconds when it properly dawned that I would be stuck in this ridiculous situation for six minutes.

And it's clear I haven't had enough violent encounters to really know what's going on when they occur.

Like most people, I can be assertive in response to low level violence - manipulation, bullying, gossip, etc...  Being a bit assertive is maybe good enough for most of life, but as a boxing style, it's going to fall a bit short. I had developed a good survival tactic - good long jab, tight defense, keep moving out and around - but you have to be quite aggressive to win a fight.

Being assertive: 'No, you just stay down there until this is over.'

Finding this aggression, without getting cross, is the plan for the next fight, which probably won't come for another year. In the meantime, I'll keep training at Kick Tactics Newtown, the best boxing gym in the city if your interested in getting into this sport. And it's a truly wonderful sport, despite, or perhaps because of all the stressful violent aspects.

Now that I've bothered to set this thing up, I will continue to blog occasionally about boxing and other stuff. When I started it, I had planned to blog a lot more, but full-time work intruded once more because Sydney is a hard city to live in without regular money.  If anyone else has worked out how to do this, please write me.