I've not posted for a while but have been keeping up my training. Gutted that a date has now arrived for our first exhibition on 13th September at the Holland House Hotel in Cardiff and I am away that weekend. Never mind - there will be others and I'm not 100% happy that I could perform in front of 500 people for another few months..
Last week was a hard session - not pleasing boxing - more uncontrolled brawling with Little Nick and Dave resulting in me having a massive bleed from both nostrils making the front of my shirt red which I think shocked a few people at the gym. It always looks worse than it is though and the real pain was my ribs from a hard body punch to my heart from Nick.
In the week that followed I finally started to feel that unless something changed I could not go on week on week getting my face smashed in and spending the following 5 days with my nose feeling like a wet sponge. On Thursday I had a one on one with Jason and he said I had to start doing what he said rather than doing what I feel I want to do. In other words, don't keep piling in up close - most of the other guys are shorter than me and I will always get body blows and punches to my face. In a competiton he said the first thing my opponent's coach will say is "tall guy, just go in with body shots..." So we drew a chalk line around the outside of the ring and spent the whole session circling at that distance doing jabs every second onto the pads. Hard work but it felt much more composed and if I wasn't going to get hit then this was the way forward. Watch the Ali vs Cleveland Williams fight and that's the style I am aiming for (though I am not for one minute even thinking to ever draw a comparison), but seriously, having images of these great fighters in action during sparring is a great inspiration.
So June 23rd I was feeling on top form and just Little Nick turned up. Putting into play sparring using the lessons of Thursday was a revolution - I hardly got hit as my range was beyond my opponent's and if I moved in with a jab I kept him in check. If i moved in with a combination then a punch sometimes got through and if I included a hook it had a good result. Need to practice uppercuts and left hooks more, but afterwards Jason said I looked like a boxer for the first time rather than a novice having a go.
I got in close in the 4th round and again paid the price - Nick literally floored me onto the canvas with a body blow exactly where he got me last week so now my ribs feel so sore I can't think of an adjective to describe the discomfort when I take a deep breath. I don't care though - it is a lesson to me for breaking my rules and a lesson to my ribs to toughen up. Think of Ali / Foreman in Zaire and you'll see how tough ribs can be although there was a fight between Amir Khan and Gomez last weekend where Gomez took to the knee with a similar body shot which weakened him to ultimately lose the fight - see below:
