Do you even need to hear what happened next? The shot landed right on that same sweet spot on the crest of my left rib cage—the same spot I had busted at Pat’s, and it felt like lightning came out of his punch, like he was driving a boiling-hot dagger through me. I cried out and almost doubled up, and from then on he clubbed me around. My mind cried out against the injustice of it all as I recognized the fact of what had happened, the shooting pains all through my body from that spot. He even went back to the body a couple of times, but nothing like that first one. Then Virgil said between rounds, “Go back to what you were doing. You got to trust in your conditioning—you were beating him.” Virgil was confused. None of the kid’s shots had been that good—why was I suddenly struggling? I tried in the third round, but the kid knew he had me. I heard his corner saying, “Go back to the body,” and I waved it over. I said no más. If I took another good body shot on the same spot, I would probably have died.
He made me quit. That’s the worst thing that can happen, for someone to make you quit. It’s a domination that is so total it becomes mental as well as physical. I felt ashamed, but far worse, I had felt that rib go, and I knew in my heart it was broken, it was worse than it had ever been. Virgil shook his head and said, “You were kicking his ass that first round.” The punch that had killed me hadn’t been a big shot. Virgil hadn’t seen it, but it had been right in the worst place.
I climbed out of the ring and felt miserable. Not only had I let Virgil down, but I had quit in front of these guys who didn’t know and didn’t care about my rib or my story. They just didn’t like me. I walked over and said thanks to both of them afterward, and they barely acknowledged me. I wanted to explain to them about my ribs, how this had first happened in Antarctica, I’m not a *—but they didn’t care. I really felt the difference from MMA. There is a cold dislike in boxing for everyone else, which blossoms into a savage hatred in the ring, carefully cultivated by everyone involved. Nobody’s really friends, although there is family in boxing.
Henry, another wizened black trainer who’d been around for years, came over and said, “You did pretty good until you got tired.” I said, “It’s gotta be broken again,” to Virgil, and he said he didn’t think he’d hit me that hard.
I walked out with Virg, and I was convinced, down in my heart, that I was fucked again. No question. The pain was worse than when I broke it the first time. I couldn’t believe that this was happening, but in a sense it also felt inevitable. I knew it was going to happen. I knew without any more doubts how terribly, terribly vulnerable I was. I was like a video game character with one ridiculous weakness. I absolutely cannot take a punch on the point of my left rib cage. At the end, he’d teed off on me, hitting me a bunch of times to the head, and they hadn’t bothered me at all. Please hit me in the head.
I could feel a funny notch on the ribs—some crepitus, I thought—so I went to an emergency room and got an X-ray. I didn’t even want to know how much it cost. But when the results came, I was so surprised I had them double check it. Not broken? But it hurt worse than when it had been broken. How could that be? I showed the young doctor the spot. I had him feel the big notch, but he looked unconvinced and went back to the X-ray and said, “No, it’s not broken, although you might want to get it X-rayed again in a few days.”
I had trouble sleeping for a few days and couldn’t breathe or twist or flex. I would take more Advil in the middle of the night and lie there taking shallow, gasping breaths.
Virgil and Andre were concerned, and both of them wanted me to get my ribs thoroughly checked out, as I hadn’t been hit hard enough to do the damage I had sustained. I was so depressed from the pain and from the shame of being made to quit, in front of Virgil, after all he had done for me, that I didn’t even want to eat. I had made plans to return to Thailand a month earlier, and was still going, but I was so heartsick that everything seemed impossible.
My reasons for going back were still valid, however. I was curious about the dogfights and there were some active dog men in Thailand I had become aware of, so I thought I would finally get a chance to see a real dogfight. Perhaps the dogfights would shed some light on the entertainment of violence, and the entire picture of human fighting. I had to see it.
Apidej had always meditated, and I felt as if I should try to figure out what he was doing. The old martial arts traditions all had meditation as a part of them, a sharpening of focus. The tai chi had given me a little taste of the internal, and Virgil talked about the concentration that was so important for boxing. I was curious to see whether meditation would help.
And finally, if I was really going to fight in Myanmar, fight lethwei (bare-fisted with head butts), then I could tune up for a while at Fairtex, get my conditioning back—and then go train in Myanmar. Myanmar (formerly Burma) borders Thailand, and was under a totalitarian military dictatorship. They still had slavery in Myanmar, and parts of the country were under rebel control. It was a whole different story from Thailand, a universe away. I wasn’t feeling too confident about being able to get a fight there; the three or four contacts I had for Myanmar were all silent. The fights there were seasonal, and I was out of season. I sent out e-mails, but no one responded.
I had laid these plans, but now I doubted I would ever fight again, because how could I fight if I couldn’t spar? Even days later, the pain hadn’t diminished, and I was just so tired of being hurt. The most chilling part of it was that it just didn’t get any better, day after day.
Virgil and I had coffee one last time at Coffee with a Beat, out in the sun. Virgil smiled at me. “Sam, you look like your dog died or something,” he said with a laugh. He told me he was proud of me, how far I’d come, and how much farther I could take it on my own. “You’ve got an understanding now. You can develop yourself.” He was a little surprised I was leaving. “You’ve been building bridges out here,” he said.
He told me the story of Corinthians, and of the Apostle Paul, who had this terrible thorn in his side. Paul asked God to remove it three times, and God didn’t remove it, because he wanted to show Paul that his own strength was greater than his weakness. Virgil repeated that, and we both sat silently contemplating that line. A woman walked by, and Virgil talked about the sound of her footsteps. “I listen to people walk,” he said. “That can tell you a lot.”
Virgil went on. “Did Dre ever tell you the story about the Olympics? After he fought the Russian, his second fight, he was totally drained. Spent, he was finished. He went to get on the bus and was thinking to himself, What am I going to do? when a woman he never met before stopped him and said to him, ‘God is with you, giving you strength.’ And his strength came back.”
As we parted for the last time, for the first time in days my black mood lifted. I was back in control, back in my own story. You’re always going to be hurt; you’ll never be a hundred percent healthy. This is fighting. But my strength is greater than my weakness.
THE SLIGHT RETURN
Sam and Meditation Master Ajan Suthep, Wat Thaton, Thailand, August 2005.
When we did not live alongside such an ocean of violence, some of us went to the fights perhaps as one keeps an aquarium. We realized that most of the world is under water, but we were high and dry…
—Ted Hoagland, “Violence, Violence” in Reading the Fights
I arrived in Thailand in the middle of the day, and as I stepped off the plane the smell of frying food hit me with the shock of recognition; the heat was familiar, but the smell was utterly unique. When I caught a cab from the airport, the taxi driver surprised me by knowing where the Fairtex camp was. He just nodded and started driving, although I was ready (from the old days) to explain the directions in my mangled Thai. The surprises were to continue.
In the five years since I had been in Thailand, Fairtex had undergone a total transformation; it was now a spa as much as a training center. The whole grounds had been shifted and covered in a beautiful massive wooden structure, and everywhere was dark paneled wood. A cool blue swimming pool shimmered idly, flanked by several workout studios with gleaming mirrors, carpeted floors, and the fanciest in equipment: stainless-steel dumbbells, ceiling-to-floor mirrors, the same expensive Hammer Strength machines as in new gyms in the United States. The grounds were cultivated; trees and bamboo sheltered every path. I walked into the front office and dropped my bag, reeling from the changes; the room was now an Internet café and restaurant. There was staff in clean white polo shirts and other foreigners casually eating. My jaw hung open.
I checked in with a man I didn’t know, then wandered around, stupefied by memory. I was surprised at h