This is the first in a series of three articles to post:
-1. Beast versus Crumb #1, Tuesday March 19
-2. Stepping Out, explaining the test bout logic, Thursday, March 21
-3. Beast versus Crumb #2, results of our parting bout, Tuesday, March 26
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Preface, Friday 3/15/24
O’Neal and I have been friends since early 2020 when we started training during End of the World Kill Everybody Bird Flu. He wants to feel what its like to be in a fight. Yesterday, I checked his footwork, and, lo and take hold, for the first time in four years, this Gael has done his footwork home work. He is working out of a closed guard, which I said is okay if you are defending or trying to win on points in amateur boxing. Well, it turns out that the you tube coach he follows is a trainer of amateur champions. I advised him, that we should do a review, test and hone what skills he has, that a week out from our bout, it is a waist, in the least, to try and introduce a new skill.
O’Neal is fair in coachability. If we had more time and I was the kind of coach that yelled and talked loud enough to hear from across the room, he’d be further ahead. I have not been able to impress on him the importance, of checking, measuring, clinching and shoving.
“These are against the rules, are they not?” he asks, in that same innocent tone he used when he heard The Colonel playing David Allen Coe outside the elk butchering shed while we threw horseshoes three years ago up in The Cascades and said in his British accent, “They do not play this on the radio!”
‘Of course they are. Everything except punching and moving is against the rules in boxing, so everybody breaks the rules all the time and overwhelms the ref. If you hold me for the tenth time you might get a warning. Besides, this is for self defense, if you are being out punched, you better grab that little bastard and run him into a wall.
“Can we spar today, like we are going to do the bout?”
I didn’t want to. My eye had been killing me. But it hurt so bad to talk, I figured, ‘why not,’ and gloved up.
We both started with 5 points.
We stepped into the tip off circle, touched gloves, and went kind of easy. He was cutting me off with his right, so I switched southpaw and he cut me off with his left, so I started whacking his guts and he started thumping me lille, noggin.
It was on.
He was starting to use his reach and throw combinations.
I could not stay long and tall enough to keep him off, so shelled up and counter punched.
I came upstairs with a left hook and he danced out after eating it.
He had 4 points left.
We crossed gloves and I tried to dominate him from southpaw muggins and he blackened my right eye with a jab and rang my left ear with a right.
I went in and hit the guts with combinations, came upstairs and he ate a good left hook. I then came down and hit the guts with both hands and he stepped out.
3 points left for the Scotsman, the evil mick twerp still holding 5.
O’Neal comes to scratch and starts leprechaun hunting so I dig to the body, go up and down, and the prick catches my left thumb. I shielded high and gave up the body, and he pounded on my popeye wrists and wee noggin. I start wing blocking, which I had thankfully not schooled him on until now, get him in the wheelhouse from orthodox and staged a muggin, him stepping out and calling for a breather.
2 points left for the Scot.
A young gal walking her dog looks worriedly over. My head is ringing louder than usual and I can’t recall the action in much detail.
O’Neal says, “So this is fighting, aye?”
“Yep, can’t help it, can’t keep you off, have to get nasty.”
“I can’t hit your body.”
Reach around behind my elbows and bang the short ribs.
We scratch and go at it without a touch of gloves and I bore in, getting a mouse under the left eye for my trouble. Shelling up I shovel to his body which he blocks and come up stairs. He eats a shovel in the chin and reaches around with his right and thumps my short ribs and I think, “Awes, hell!.” It still hurts, today.
I step back, and when he advanced I just throw a few combinations on autopilot. He steps out and calls for a break and I hit him three more, my reaction time so slow that a left and right I had phoned in three seconds ago where in progress while my mind was saying, ‘I should not be hitting him, but I am.’
Saved by the negro in my potato-hearted soul.
1 point to go and I just throw until he quits, getting dinged in the right eye again, it still swelling today, both of them being moused.
That bout might have ended, according to our point scheme, borrowed from stick fighting point bouts, 5/5 to 0/0, the first number offense and the second defense, or in this case tenacity.
That was not enough for the Beast and he wanted more crumbs with his leather pudding, so we added three rounds.
Round 6 he outpointed me and I worried his body. His arms froze up, his shoulders too tight, right about as I got warmed up and thought about taking off my hoody lest I sweat, then decided against losing the cushion.
Round 7, I went after this man in peek-a-boo and tried to finish him. He checked both my shoulders and shoved me about ten feet, a full three feet out of the far side of the circle.
He grunted, “There, I shoved, am I penalized?”
“That round goes to you—I have to stay in with your big ass. That juiced my legs, just trying to resist that shove. My bad leg [right] is about to fold. I’m going to have to stand in front of you this round.”
“Oh, good, I get to find out what nasty tricks you have from there!”
For the eight round we touched up and went for it. He busted up my left shoulder with a right straight, bruised my left and right wrists with elbow catches, checked my right shoulder with his left [now sounds like a box of cereal when I move it], and then stalled. So I started banging his body. He began to move and jab and his arms froze up and he called himself out, “What’s the point if I can’t punch. Why are my arms so tired?”
Your shoulders are tight and you are anxious—this is knew to you. But finally, after 4 years of not checking, you are doing it—it came out in this.”
“Was this a fight?”
“Bro, I hurt both my shoulders and my left elbow trying to hurt you—this was like fighting 8 novices back to back. I did not pull a punch, not one, and tried to level you with a lateral hammer fist [strained right bicep and forearm below elbow]; most importantly, we kept score, our egos were on the line and I wanted to quit a couple times—you awakened the wimp that I have duct-taped to a steam pipe in the cellar of my soul so I had to choke him out.
Crumb: 7 to
Beast: 1.
I expect to do as many rounds next week as O’Neal needs. We will do rounds until one of us quits. In that case, I am inclined to suggest that the leader may not win by quitting while ahead, allowing us to resurrect the No Decision from the era 1900 thru 1919, before the Walker Act in 2020 legalized decisions, or a Draw, left up to the fighter who did not quit.
This type of fighting is the best way to train for survival situations, as we are trying to defend and dominate without producing a body, where MMA victors must kill their adversaries unless a referee is there to drag them off the unconscious person they are beating or choking. The worst thing bout prize fighting formats for preparing a fighter to survive a criminal encounter is that he is not legally responsible for his actions.
Boxers still die in the ring every year.
Typical “street fights” usually on side walks or parking lots, last 3 to 10 seconds. Our rounds averaged 30 seconds, the longest a minute. The arrival of third parties and the lack of criminal will, keeps most encounters to a 10th of the amount of time O’Neal lasted with an evil twerp. This format was developed for self defense testing of weapon skills in 1998 and will be detailed in ‘Stepping Out.’
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PS:
The funny thing is, my eye which keeps me in bedded dark for 14 hours a day, and which is sizzling right now from writing this, was made no worse by having two stiff jabs sunk into it yesterday. This tells me I need my glasses prescription adjusted.
Thanks for the check up, Doc O’Neal.
