The Story
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This weekend I took part in the Saarland Amateur Boxing Championships 2012. The exact date was 9th and 10th March 2012 and the time was planned to be after 20:00 o'clock. Although I haven't heard anything positive about those amateur championships, I decided to participate and check out what's really going on. And yeah, even precautioned and theoretically ready, in the practical application I was literally blasted off! Felt like being in a swine farmyard and no joking at all! I've encountered numerous old and new intrigues, people suffering from all kinds of complexes, displaying arrogance, greed and schizophrenic behavior (excuse me for missing the words for the rest of psychiatric disorders, but believe me - there were plenty of examples for any of them). Anyway, I'll choose the story-like art of telling and won't be that concrete with names and won't dig deep into the wounds of the practically dead boxing scene here. |
Friday
Friday the weight in was at 18:30 so we met us in front of our boxing gym a bit earlier. The weather was nice and sunny so the possibility for some swinging on the big swing nearby. The overall mood was excellent considering that sever hours later all should box good. Although we were a lot of boxers, almost all were young and I was the oldest (I first think about that now). After everyone came, we got into the cars and went to "Hirschberghalle Furpach" ("deer hall Furpach" in exact translation). A place google maps or bing maps never heard of, hidden near a village called Furpach. The event itself was left unadvertised and maybe google won't know that it actually took place. I won't mean that it is absolutely necessary to advertise in that way, but consider that this is the single and biggest event around here, as there is practically no professional boxing in this state, so at least a flyers or some posters or whatever would be cool. Only the dates were mentioned in couple of calendars, but no starting time, no price - nothing! This made me prepare myself for awful organization :)
We arrived. In this hidden place there was a small hall with two dressing rooms for all clubs. There we around 8 clubs, 3 out of them were the big ones - our club from Voelklingen followed by Neunkirchen and Saarlouis and the rest were St. Ingbert, Homburg, Saarbruecken, Wellensweiler and I think I am missing one more. Friendship between clubs or at least some respect between them was completely missing...
After stucking to the small dressing room we went to weight in. We we two boxers from my club at 69 and we were about to box in two different groups as we were told. My mate had to box in B group against some unexperienced fighter and I had to box in A group against experienced ones. On the weight in one of my then possible opponent went with 1.5 kilo above, but he was from the organizers team - no problem! Good boy, well done! Nevertheless, we were weighted exact :)
The next awesome piece of new was just about to come... Namely, I was dropped down to B group to let the homeboy to fight a single fight directly to the finals against some solid guy, instead of qualifying against me (consider that there was a fourth one that ducked even the possibility to fight the solid guy already). Great news for the home boy as he went directly to the finals! Strangely, he ducked that fight too and by doing this got the "second place". How silly?! I won't say in no matter that I would have won him, or especially won't say a word about my miserable chance to win against the solid guy, I would have not ducked that fight however...
All of this is only the first part of me being rescheduled. The second part was I had to fight against my teammate to qualify for the finals in saturday. My mate had some issues with his nose and chose to participate only because we weren't in one group, as there was no sense to make a fight against me. Knowing this we were totally blasted and felt really fucked up. A great scenario - let the both fighters from same club to fight themselves and then have the winner tired for the finals! How great!
Nevertheless, we told ourself to give a good fight and let the better one win. I was a bit experienced and showed some technical skills so I won that one. Unfortunately, I have no video of that fight, but a few nice photos by friend of mine:
I got tired after fighting, but it was not only physical fatigue. It was the hours of being involved in this shit and in many more small shits that happened like the one that the fights started two hours later, or the absolute tiny place to move, or the aggressive looks by everybody in this swine farmyard... So physically and more mentally worn out I came home around 2:00 o'clock...
Saturday
I got up wishing all to be gone. I was thinking only about the pancakes, that I promised to organize the next day at my home with friends and prepared myself with shopping on thursday for that (shopping on empty stomach is painful thing, believe me). At least that day, there was no second weight in and we went a bit later for the show. I promised a knockout just to show those guys that there is no free lunch and that their calculations for a win would fail.
Time went slowly. The only place to take a seat was near the ring. Awful things happened there and worst thing that comes to my mind was a kid fight with one kid being about 120 cm big and the other one about 150 cm big. The difference between their boxing skills was also that big, as their size. The awful thing was the aggressiveness that the bigger kid was showing against the smaller one, considering that the smaller one had not a single percent chance to win. Kids will you say... And the trainer of the bigger kid screaming with all of his voice power "DESTROY HIM! PUT HIM ON THE CANVAS!!!"! That made the trainer of the smaller kid to go to the other side mad to tell him that he is insane or something like that, and he had the right. Nevertheless, the crowd enjoyed that as well...
The only good word I have to say here is that almost all of the other fights were really tough and all guys left it all on the ring.
Suddenly it was my time to fight again. I was terribly tired in my mind and just a little bit physically tired, but that was not the problem as I am used to train every day. I didn't knew who my opponent was until we both got into the ring and I was pretty surprised, as he was the last one expected (I though my opponent was another one). The fight started and I was really tight so in the end I got really worn out physically (today I thing I did very little sparring sessions prior the the battle and despite my superior physical condition I worn out very fast). My trainer advised me to do something, but I was too slow to realize the instructions and just fought in cautious way and won by leaving the other guy with injured nose. He made it all three rounds and proved to be really tough guy and made my promise, for taking him out, to fail. I have some partial recording of that fight, which you can see too:
There was I - a champion, and the only thing I was happy about, was that it's all over and I was looking forward in my dreams about biking and climbing in the forest tomorrow and then making pancakes!
This was the last fight with a fighter from our club involved so I was cheered really hard and I am thankful for that :) Here to note that although the other clubs hated themselves too, in every our fight they joined forces against our club (our is the biggest one, so the small snakes gather together as everyone would expected).
After taking a shower I managed to make some photos with my club made we fought and with some others:
Another mate watching the knockout he did the fight before me :)
Here with my trainer and friend couple of days after the event :)
The End
So this is my short blog entry about unforgettable experience called Saarland Amateur Boxing Championships 2012! I missed a lot of things to write and may write some more besides adding the videos and some more photos. For me all the happening was a real book of life - I learned so much and I am happy and thankful for that!
I almost forgot to thank a lot to Eduard, the man in the shadow, just like in the photo, who took care of all side stuff around the ring like taking me to the event and warming me up!
Also big up to all other trainers Heiko, Bernd and Michael from Voelklingen, for making this event possible for all the kids in the club :)