#598 Life in the Flesh- Craig Davidson
There has always been drama in boxing. Pure aggression mixed with elegant precision; years of work put in to a three minute round; facing a brutal opponent but the real battle is inside the fighter’s head. The stories almost write themselves.
“A prizefighter is a freak. He’s got maybe ten years in the roughest business in the world, a business ruled by a strict hierarchy: winners and losers. He’s not a paperhanger, a lawyer, a beancounter. He doesn’t put on galoshes, grab his briefcase, catch the trolley, the same daily grind for thirty, forty years. He gives it all now, or never.”
Of course, they don’t write themselves, and Davidson takes his story to an interesting place. This story is about a boxer, Roberto. He killed a man in the ring. It was a legal fight and a fair contest, but a man died, and everyone saw him do it. It immediately ruined Roberto. He stopped training, started drinking and eventually moved to Thailand running away from his demons.
Once a fighter always a fighter. In Thailand, Roberto found the world of Muay Thai. Now twenty five years later he is a trainer still living in Thailand: “You can’t outrun this life. Sounds weak, I know, but it’s the truth. Whether it was bred into me or whether I’ve always harbored the best has long ceased to matter.”
His old manager now sends him hard-cases to train with the Muay Thai fighters to toughen them up. The most recent is a bruiser named The Kid. When his ego and body take a beating in his first fight, Roberto gets a fight he wasn’t expecting.
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