still working on those three steps Virgil had shown me. Then he had me start in on the heavy bag, in and out in a straight line. He was adamant and unwavering on the basic fundamentals, on twisting the jab all the way over. But his chief concern was telegraphing, giving a little visual cue before you punch or move.
“You drop that left off your chin every time. I’m gonna see that—either keep it pinned or let it free, but don’t drop it when you are going to punch.”
If you telegraph your punches, you add to your opponent’s reaction time, giving him more time to see the punch and slip or block it. He sees the punch before you throw it. The key to hitting is being totally unpredictable. If he can’t get any kind of read on you, you are putting him on the defensive. Virgil is the real deal; he doesn’t teach the same combinations that everyone knows and just go over them on the mitts again and again. He teaches fighting. Andre’s shadowboxing never looks like other boxers’; it doesn’t fall into that overly comfortable rehearsed sameness. It’s almost awkward at times, because real fighting is often awkward.
Virgil was on the phone when Antonio finished his run on the treadmill and came over next to me and started talking about the jab, showing me what I was doing wrong, and Virgil instantly squawked at him, “Yo, T, we’re not teaching Sam how to be you, we’re teaching Sam how to be him!” and Antonio got it. He laughed and said, “You right, you right,” and smiled and vanished upstairs.
“Now shadowbox this next round, doing what we worked on. I want to check your concentration,” said Virgil. I shadowboxed carefully for the round, shuffling shoes, scraping the mats.
“Now, Sam, you’re critiquing yourself, you’re thinking too much. You can’t worry so much what it looks like, you’ve got to just let it feel right.”
I went another round, worrying less about Virgil’s concerned eye and trying to enjoy myself more, and got a tight-lipped nod. “Better. Now I want you to shadowbox the whole round and pick up your feet; I don’t want to hear them.” He demonstrated in his brilliant white shoes, gliding, dancing his elegant waltz, his feet hushed. “Focus on your feet.” And so another round went by, stepping and moving, listening to the tap and scrape.
“When I hear your feet so loud, pounding, it tells me that you are too stiff, too rigid,” he said, and then we did dance. I put my jab out straight, and Virgil led me by that outstretched arm, pushing and pulling, with me stepping quietly one-two behind him, trying to keep the tension to a minimum and feel where he was going, trying to keep his feet split with my lead foot. By the end of the round, I felt a little better.
“Just feel where I am going,” he said. He would turn easily and smoothly, and I began to understand what he wanted, waltzing around the garage.
The worst was to come. We went to the mitts, and Virgil would touch me and have me jab, and then come back when I left the jab out there and whap me on the head. After a few times of this, he said, “Sam, I can see you tense when I come to hit, and I can see you get embarrassed and flush, I can read the lines on your forehead. Any one of those things is too much. I can make you do what I want to do.” Wham, he hit me again. I was red-faced with indignation. I hadn’t been hit in a long time, even just training, and felt awkward and out of joint, lumbering and tight. My left shoulder, of Brazil fame, was burning. Virgil shook his head.
Around we went. Virgil didn’t tell me to stop bouncing, but he did say between rounds, “Sam, bouncing is something that happens when you’re young. If you’re a fighter and you’ve been in the game since eleven, twelve years old, then when you’re eighteen or nineteen, you can bounce and move, like Andre. And when he gets older, he won’t bounce like that, but he’ll be able to call it up when he needs it. For a thirty-year-old man, bouncing is a waste of energy, just bouncing up and down.”
Whap, he’d tap me, but I began to read him a little and retract my hands fast enough, despite the pain in both shoulders, still overexcited and off, and Virgil would laugh when I threw a wrong punch—he just couldn’t help himself. When I would stumble or get ahead, we would circle, giggling.
“Don’t let me rush you. Wait for things to be right, be deliberate. You don’t want to be flying down the freeway so fast you can’t see the scenery, because you’ll miss your exit. I’ll try and hurry you up, but don’t let me, stay within yourself, within what you want to do, and wait for the opening.”
We finally called it quits, and Virgil, if not happy, was at least content with my progress and understanding for the day, and he helped me take off my gloves and wraps, something no one had ever done before.
“I was thinking about what you said, you know, show me how you want to be?” I said to Virgil, glowing from the exercise. “The fighter I want to be like is Sugar Ray Leonard, with his hands like this,” and I showed him how Leonard would stand with his arms across his chest, a pocket fighter who could out-quick everyone. I was kidding. I knew what kind of fighter I could be: the tall white guy with decent punches who blocks and takes everything. Not a bob-and-weave wonder—that’s for athletic black guys. But I wanted to hear what Virgil would say. Could I be a pocket-fighter like Sugar Ray?
“Well, you’ve got to have the reflexes to dodge and slip if you want to fight out of the pocket like that, but it’s possible. What you’ve got to remember is you are seeing Ray Leonard after three hundred amateur fights and twenty professional. He didn’t start out like that. You got to fight like you, who you are. If I got a guy who can moonwalk and throw a bolo punch and land it every time, then I’ll have him throw it. That’s who he is.”
That afternoon, I spoke to Pat Miletich on the phone, and he said, “You’re going to fight a pro fight, right?” Pat has always had a slightly exaggerated take on my abilities; if I could stay in one place and train full-time for a year, maybe. Virgil eventually warned me that if I really got into a gym and stayed there, somebody would try to take me pro.
Over the next few days, I got a handle on what Virgil wanted to try to do with me. Self-expression, slowness, fundamentals. He wanted me to be able to punch with balance by the time I left, and then I could develop on my own from there. “We’re not going to spar you until the end. I want to get you right,” he said.
Back in front of the mirror at King’s, I was going slower and slower, just two punches for five straight rounds. Virgil sat right on top of me, making me slow down. I could have been embarrassed, but there was no point. Just try to learn, see if you can get it right. There were a lot more beginners in the gym that day anyway, a lot more college-looking kids. Virgil said it was because of Andre and the exposure he’d given the place. Slower and slower, to the point where I was punching at tai chi speed.
V was in my ear, about balance and that rear foot being like a shark’s tail, streaming out behind the body, where power comes from. “If you get the feet right, everything else will fall in place, that’s where speed and power come from,” he said. And I could hear the echo of Pat Miletich saying, “If you want your hands to move faster, you have to move your feet faster,” and William C. C. Chen saying, “Everything from the toe.”
Every morning, I would get a call from Virgil around seven or eight o’clock with the plan for the day. We would meet for coffee, or run the lake, and after a few days he called with a different plan.
“Sam, I want you to meet me over in Hayward, at Joe’s place. We are going to work with Heather—I’m going to work you together.”
Heather Hartman was a woman whom Virgil and Andre had known for years. They would see and talk to her around the gym all the time, as she was working with the same strength coach, Mike Benz. She was a professional soccer goalie, but the women’s pro league had folded; she was still playing but not making any money. She was twenty-four years old, and she and Virgil had discussed it for months before they decided to train her. “Virgil kept saying I had long arms,” she said.
Joe’s Karate Gym, in Hayward, a town just south of Oakland, was where Andre and Virgil had first met, many years ago. Virgil had just finished his workout (he was still fighting), and a nine-year-old boy was hitting the bag, and peeking at him. Virgil saw something in him, and gave him an approving nod, and the boy went back to hitting the bag. Joe and Virgil had maintained their relationship, and the boxing ring was open for Virgil to use in the mornings, and so Heather, Virgil, and I often met there.
Heather was a tall, strong blond woman, powerful through the shoulders and legs and sporty in a way that reminded me of the New England girls I had grown up with. She was very serious and dedicated, and one of the reasons she was sick of soccer was that she was tired of being the most serious player on the field.
We shadowboxed in front of