The next morning I was up to meet Virgil in the pearly gray dawn, and as I headed toward my car, I could see a rat’s nest of papers and litter on the front seat. I walked slowly around the car in the warm morning light, with the ocean coloring the sky. One of the rear triangular windows had been neatly mashed in—the rock that had been used as a tool was still by the rear tire—all the doors had been unlocked, and the trunk had been popped. For some reason, I had thought things would be safe in the trunk. Of course, the trunk only keeps things safe from prying eyes; once you’re in the car, you just pop the trunk with that little latch on the floor. All my sparring and workout gear, plus a backpack filled with street clothes, was gone. Ah, well, at least I’d brought my camera and laptop inside. Who needs street clothes anyway?
I drove through the morning calm to Coffee with a Beat, the coffee shop that Virgil called his office, on the park next to Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. The sun came up warm, but it was cold in the shade, and through the trees I could see the glimmer of the lake. I walked up and saw Virgil, looking the same, regal and smiling. We shook hands warmly; he seemed genuinely happy to see me. He was instantly recognizable, tall, broad-shouldered, and lean, with his head shaved bald and a black mustache, an Everlast ball cap, and sunglasses. He dressed in trainer chic, crisp athletic gear that was clean and sharp. When his sunglasses were off, you could see his eyes were intense, probing; he wore the glasses almost like a poker player does, to help him conceal his thoughts and where his eyes were, so you couldn’t read him.
We drank coffee and talked, moving one of the little outdoor tables into the sun. We caught up. I asked after Andre, and Virgil mentioned the cage-fighting article, which had been published in Men’s Journal with maximum gore. “I hate to see you like that,” he said lightly, and I laughed, because the editors had gone with pictures that made it look as bad as possible, despite my protestations and the photographer’s wishes. I told him the whole story, about the weight mix-up and everything.
He shook his head. “You aren’t fighting to take punishment,” he said. “A true fighter learns how to say no if the fight is unfair. You don’t have to fight; it’s not a million-dollar title shot on the line.”
He chuckled to himself quietly, mulling over his words. He looked at me through his sunglasses and said, smiling, “It’s prizefighting, not pride-fighting.”
We talked about what I wanted to accomplish, and what he was doing with Andre and Antonio Johnson, a fighter who had recently come to him. Antonio was another kid with a gigantic amateur background, and he could have made the Olympic team but didn’t make weight—a sign that his discipline was a mess.
We made plans to meet up later at King’s Boxing Gym, and as we stood up, Virgil said in his dry voice, “It’s all about figuring out who you are.” It’s something you hear again and again in boxing: Boxing is about knowing your identity. If you are a boxer, someone with skill and technical virtuosity but perhaps without power, then box; use your science, move and hit and defend. If you are a puncher, with power to hurt with just one punch, then get yourself in a position to let your hands go and punch. “Let your hands go” is the refrain everywhere for “Start throwing punches.” Your hands are trained to punch in combinations, just let them go and do what they want. Trainers and bystanders will implore fighters who seem oddly frozen, who could win the fight if they would only land a few combinations. Of course, everything is different for the man in the ring.
I drove back through Oakland, hot and dusty with those wide, hardscrabble streets. East Oakland was a picture of neglect and emptiness—though here and there old warehouses were being turned into fancy apartments because it was an easy commute to San Francisco, just a few blocks from the Bay Bridge. The sun beat down through a perfect blue sky, and the ocean was a presence I could feel and know, but not see or hear.
I remembered King’s Boxing Gym from the last time I had been there, and it was essentially unchanged, sandwiched between the highway and the train tracks, between chop shops and massive concrete walls. A simple sign and a narrow metal door in an accordion garage door led the way inside.
King’s was long and dark, sweaty and well worn, cavernous. I noticed some changes—some new equipment and more college-looking kids, a tiny bit of upscale. There was a refrigerator with protein drinks for sale. The price of membership was still right, thirty bucks a month to work out, fifty with a trainer. There were more hacks, more white guys with running shoes, and maybe fewer professionals. But it was still a serious place, a pure boxing gym, and the walls were covered in posters and flyers for fights, history peeling and aging on the walls everywhere you looked.
It was good to see Andre again—he smiled and we shook hands with genuine good feeling. I instantly noticed the subtle differences that age, maturity, and the crucible of the Olympics had brought him—he was a man now, and he knew it. In the year and a half since I’d seen him, his eyes had acquired a layered wisdom. The gym had pictures of him and a huge banner congratulating him on his Olympics win, and I muttered to him with a smile, “So this is your gym now?” and he grinned back and replied, “Something like that.”
I met Antonio Johnson, a light-skinned black kid with a handsome, boyish face and a feathery mustache, almost Latino-looking. He had just turned pro at 140. He was as verbose as Andre was quiet, filling the air with a stream of street banter, discussing a fighter they knew on the TV show The Contender, a fighter Virgil had trained. “Babyface, he can crack a little bit though,” Antonio said with finality. “He can crack” means he can punch hard, something every boxer lusts after, knockout power in each hand.
Andre said, “If they had me on that show, they would have to do it without my family.” He was referring to the way the TV show always built up to the fights by having the fighter’s wife and kids in the dressing room for tearful good-byes and good lucks, a sort of relentless, smarmy tear-jerking. Andre kept his wife and kids at a distance when he was fighting; he actually left the house and “went to camp” at Virgil’s training house down the road weeks or months before the fight, to focus himself.
Andre had a fight coming up in just a few days, so I didn’t talk to him, as I didn’t want to mess with his focus. A critical element for a fighter is focus, something Virg started drumming into me on the first day. On the wall was a poster saying “The Three C’s for Fighters: Conditioning, Coachability, and Concentration.” More than any athletic ability, any natural speed or strength, those three C’s make real professional fighters.
Virg looked at me with pursed lips and said, “I need to see what I got. Why don’t you get up in the ring and shadowbox.” I went through the ropes, feeling on display, and shadowboxed fast for a round or two, trying to look good. Sidelined by my shoulder, I hadn’t really done anything since the Miletich camp, almost a year ago, and felt awkward and ungainly. But not too bad, I thought.
Virg stopped me after two rounds and climbed into the ring with me. “Now, real slow, I want you to step and jab, step across with a jab, then step back with a jab-right-jab,” and he demonstrated for me, elegant and tall and graceful, almost balletic. I frowned and concentrated and tried to block out the watchful gaze of Antonio and Andre. I danced like Virgil had just shown me. I was very aware of how tight I was, everything seized up and bunched. Step, step, step back with the left-right.
At the end of the round, Virgil came off the ropes and told me, “Sam, your concentration was terrible. Twenty-six times you did that, and every time you ended on a straight right. Now, if I know you are throwing the right and then just standing there, I’m going to make you throw it and then come back on top of it.”
“So never end on the right cross,” I said dumbly. They call it “posing,” or “taking a picture”—a fighter throws a punch and finishes frozen, contemplating the beauty of his last punch, there to be hit by a counterpunch. Keep moving, move your head and body after you punch.
“Come back with the jab, so that even if I’m countering, the jab is there to disrupt me. And jab as you move away.”
I quickly came to understand one of Virgil’s governing precepts, which is fight when it’s good for you. Don’t stand and fight when your opponent wants to. Move around—fight only when it’s better for you. Muhammad Ali’s first fight with Floyd Patterson is a perfect example. Ali just kept moving and moving and moving, and every now and again paused to hit Floyd, and then moved some more. Boxing critics hated him for it, the “cowardice” of it, but it was unbeatable. Floyd didn’t have an answer.
I felt like a fool in the ring doing these slow, basic beginner moves, after I had been shadowboxing fast and well (in my mind, anyway).