The gym is where one goes to work out. If one also happens to be a boxing writer it isn't always that simple, though occasionally, it's certainly better.
I had just finished my workout at the Lincoln Boxing Club in Riverside, CA, and leaned against an unused training table to watch everyone else get their work in. At 43-years-old I'm still fascinated by the sport and its practitioners.
Watching various trainers teach, in their own peculiar yet familiar ways, and watching how each fighter responds to instruction, can keep me mesmerized for hours, like Rain Man with a phonebook.
Although I'm a boxing writer (you may have picked up on that), I don't go to the Lincoln Gym to find stories or do interviews. It's good to have a place to work out and not have the fighters around me wondering if I'm going to ask for an interview. On the other hand, sometimes interviews come looking for me.
As I watched and listened to a gym full of young men and women learn to walk the tightrope of "hit and not get hit" that is boxing, a man walked over to me and asked, "So what's your story?"
Not wanting to bore the poor guy into a coma with the truth, I tried to formulate some fantastic tale of heroism and daring-do that had somehow led me to the gym. Couldn't do it. "I'm just here to work out," I said.
"What do you do?" Now, I thought, the cat is about to exit the bag and thrash the furniture.
"I'm a writer," I said. "A boxing writer."
At which point he didn't run, roll his eyes and go silent, or ask me if I wanted to spar with the biggest baddest dude in the gym. What he did was engage me in an enjoyable and highly informative conversation. In the next blog, I'll share it with you.
