An hour ago I was wrapping up confirmations for Sean’s visit to Baltimore for sparring in boxing, with the blade, and an introduction to the stick. I can fill the role of blade and stick sparring partner, but not boxing partner. I get concussed easily since 2012 and would be puking for two days after boxing with a thirty year old man who knows how to hit. My last call of the day was to Craig, the only one of my current fighters who is an effective boxer, who has been in the ring with elite amateurs and pros, and can still talk about it, and has enough weight to deal with a big man in his prime.

Boxing was my first love, but is now my second art. I have excelled in fighting and coaching with weapons to an extent I could not have dreamed of with boxing and have focused there. But I owe boxing. the problem with boxing is that one guy is making half of the money and that a hundred guys are making the other half, with the remaining few thousand fighters having to work day jobs to feed their families, training after hours and in spots.

As a low level boxing coach I introduce men to the art, and then hand them off to a more qualified coach, or I work as a specialized coach for experienced guys like Craig who need to patch up a hole in their game, but do not have enough available training time for a full time coach to devote significant mental energy to their development. Every winter, when Craig’s work slows down enough to train full time, he asks me again, “Could I turn pro? Would you corner for me? Should I fight MMA or box?”

Every year I lay out the dedication and technical progress parameters that would induce me to back some mother’s son in a fight with a cave man that could turn him into an idiot or a gimp in five minutes. For boxing is the art of punishing dangerous men. If done properly, and with gifts, luck, and the wink of the usually malevolent Gods of Combat, it can be the best experience of your life—a Tiger Hunt, a Lion Hunt, a chance to see the elephant of your dreams and the monster of your nightmares and come out the other end a better man.

Conversely, if done improperly, without the benefit of good fortune, without enough if the right gifts, and while the malevolent Gods of Combat are horny for mortal agony and grimacing with mischief, than you might as well be three rich kids getting high and throwing stones at a man eating tigress after hours at the Bleeding Heart Liberal Left Coast Zoo.

With Sean coming to town I want to get Craig into the gym for a body mechanic check and a tune up, so that I can concentrate on coaching Sean while these knuckleheads hit each other. The fighter needs a voice he’s keyed in on while he’s sparring, and I’ve only got one.

I called Craig, and by his breath when he answered I could tell he was at work in the ghetto, installing cable, and only wondered if he had finished climbing the pole to take my call or had just chased off some hood rats trying to raid his van for copper.

“Hey, James, what’s up?”

“Am I goin’ to see you at the gym this weekend, buddy?”

“Work’s picked up so much this week, Saturday is out, and Sunday is probably not happening.”

“What about Tuesday? Sean’s coming into town.’

“Oh, yeah, I committed to that like a month ago—so I have to show for that.”

“If you can’t make it, that’s okay. I’ll spar with him and they can ship my brains to you in a blender.”

“Yeah, I’ll make it. Not sure about the time though.”

“Now that I will be posting it for the world to know that Craig is training on Tuesday, how about if I just announce that you will be operating on Colored People Time, and we’ll schedule our other stuff around when you show up?”

“Sure, but just for that, I might show up at eleven and crush Whitey’s low expectations!”

“Thanks, man. Your kids gotta eat—making your money comes first. Please tell me you’re going to walk in looking more like Bradley then Isaac Hayes.”

“Actually, you’re going to be proud of me. I joined this health spa [great, more rich sluts trying to get into his pants and distracting him from boxing in the process] that has a boxing gym and a pool and have been putting in forty-five in the pool and a half hour on the bag. Running though, running is killing me.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re too old to run. You’re thirty. Swim and shadowbox. You don’t know how thrilled I am to hear that you are shadowboxing a half hour a day!”

Getting Craig to shadowbox is like pulling teeth.

“Yes, I thought that would make you happy.”

“Look, swim and hit the bag on your own and I’ll work your movement when we get together. The most successful Olympic boxer—with four wins over sixteen years—only swam and shadowboxed. Frazier swam, Ruas swam. Keep swimming.”

“Will do, James. I’ll text you with my ETA on Tuesday.”

Mister Frank—my coaching coach—taught me twelve years ago that a boxing coach’s real job is to guide the fighter’s decision making process, and that this must be done in keeping with the fighter’s inclinations as well as is familial and financial commitments. Craig might not turn pro, might keep prioritizing along our current societal lines rather than in line with his primal essence, until he is too old. But along the way he can help other fighters along, and maybe one day, becomes the coach to elevate the art in the body of someone special.

In the earliest times, after Man had captured fire, he had no means of replicating it, and had to keep it alive, in a cradle of skin and bone, so that it could be fanned to brighter life when possible. In our current age of high pressured commitment to impersonal systems of trade and toil, to pressure a part time fighter, to make him chose between the brutal poverty of your shared art and his family, might be to lose him for the art. In than end, as Mister Frank articulated, coaching is really about keeping the art alive. He was proud when his best pro and his best amateur—nationally ranked—landed good jobs, confident that they would return to the gym to help younger fighters along the brutal boxing path.

Never have I felt more like the old man in the cave than when advising fighters. It occurs, that just as the first shaman must have carried the smoldering coals around in the clan fire cradle, that the boxing coach’s purpose is simply to keep the art from dying so that one day, when Fate permits, it can be fanned into a blaze.