Shanghai Fight Diaries: What It’s Like To Get Punched In The Stomach

What I wrote in the first installment is true--that I had never been in a boxing ring before White Collar Boxing--but I had actually worn boxing gloves twice before I started training.

We’ll talk about the second time in a later post, but the first was when I was a 17 years old.

My friend Brian had fought Notre Dame’s amateur boxing tournament, the Bengal Bouts (an awesome event, first organized by Knute Rockne, which raises money for education and healthcare in Bangladesh). Thinking I might be interested in learning a few basics combinations, Brian brought over two pairs of gloves, and we went down to a local park to do a bit of (very) basic training.

After going over the one, two, three and four (left jab, straight right, left hook, and right hook), we decided to do a bit of light sparring. Considering we were just messing around, and assuming that I would take my cues from him in terms of punch strength and placement, Brian left his body wide open.

Excited about sparring for the first time and being kind of an asshole, I threw a hard two right to his solar plexis, the collection of nerves located in the top center of your abdomen more commonly referred to as “your breadbasket” or “last place you want to be punched by some shithead teenager.”

Mouth guard flies, session ends.

Fast forward to last Friday: I’m sparring with my teammate and good friend, Dvo. I throw a left straight, which Dvo slips under and counters with an eight to the same spot I hit Brian. But I should have expected the shot Dvo gave me and it still sucked.

It’s not so much that it hurts. It debilitates. Your whole body exhales and contracts at the same time. In any situation this is less than optimal, and it’s not like getting the wind knocked out of you can only happen in boxing. But in the ring it leaves you completely defenseless.

Having had a few broken noses and concussions, I try to be very conscious of getting hit in the face; but in a three-round amateur fight, a hard body shot probably has more of a likelihood of ending a fight early than anything to the head. Protection is the key to any fight, but actually protecting yourself is trickier.

Almost anyone who’s trained for boxing will tell you that the most useful training method is sparring, but there’s a difficult balance to strike in terms of the intensity of these sparring sessions.

For professionals, this doesn’t really pose a problem: there are plenty of hungry fighters ready to jump at the possibility to be a punching bag for a bigger name.

But for White Collar or any other amateur event, you have to tow a thin line. Last week, they split the 14 boxers into two teams, so anyone I go up against in practice is going to be a teammate. The trainers tell us to ease up on the power and just focus on speed and technique, which makes sense up until the moment you get punched in the face or gut and your adrenaline takes over.

So six or seven years after my first (failed) training session, I’m actually surprised Brian didn’t knock me out. It must have been pretty frustrating to be mature about the whole thing. And these are the problems you face when you decide to learn a sport that revolves around inflicting harm to yourself and others.