Boxing has always been an undercurrent in my life, and since the Princesses have taken it up, it flows near the surface. The Admiral is not a fan of the pugilistic arts, but she allows us to participate as fully as we want, but always with the warning, “Don’t get hurt.”

My love of boxing goes back to when I was but a wee lad of 5 or 6. My dad was the boxing commissioner for a west Texas county. We would spend Saturdays at gyms as he did whatever a commissioner does. What I did was fall in love with boxing.

The gyms were all different, but the same. The smells are the first things you notice. The odors of greasy food, stale coffee, tobacco smoke, along with the leather of the gloves and the sweat of the fighters. They are potpourri to those who love the game. 

Next is the noise. The grunts as fighters throw gloved punches. There are squeaks of the boxing shoes as fighters spar, the rhythmic tap as a rope is jumped, punches on the heavy bag and another rhythm as the speed bag gets worked. Sometimes you hear a heavy, hard, thud as a body hits the canvas.  All is quiet until the downed fighter is up, then the cacophony resumes. It’s music to me.

There was constant chatter. In Spanish and English, I learned the language of boxing. At the fights, when I heard, “Lo golpeó, lo golpeó, I was yelling, “Hit him, hit him,” along with them.

I loved the fighters. I was awed as they pounded each other, but when it was over, they were brothers. They congratulated each other, the seconds in the corners, and everyone shook hands.

The best was when they took the time to lace the big gloves on me and would get on their knees and box with me. I remember the smiles as they blocked my weak punches, and I remember the fire in their eyes when I landed one. I learned by a harder hit to my head that this was a blood sport, and I may be a little boy, but with the gloves on, I was an opponent. 

I sat with Dad at Golden Gloves tournaments and he taught me. The fans around us joined in to aid with my learning. We became part of the community. A boxing crowd is like no other. Everyone interacts, and before the night is over, you’ve made friends that you look for at the next fight.

I took the Princesses to their first professional fight in Biloxi last week. It was a middle-weight championship fight. The arena was classier, but to my joy, the crowd was just as good.

We got to see all the undercard fights, and they are always an education. In amateur fights there are not undercards. All the fighters want to win and are on fairly equal footing. Not so in the pros.

Often, a fighter with talent is matched with one clearly not in the same league. The promoter is trying to build an impressive record for the talented one to be able to get him better fights with bigger purses. That is the seamier side of boxing, and it was manifest in abundance.

The championship fight was a very good one going the distance of twelve rounds. The champ sustained an injury to his leg in the sixth, and the challenger, a much less talented fighter pulled out a victory, but that meant little to me.

What made my evening was being with the Princesses and seeing their faces, and hearing their shouts as the rounds wore on, and watching them as they went up to the fighters and got their pictures taken with them.

I was pleased to see that fighters are still the same, the salt of the earth doing what they can to rise above the rest. Good lessons for all of us.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, at: www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us.