Fight Club, Part 1 of 4
I went to bed last night at right around 9, but after twenty minutes of tossing and turning, I couldn’t get my brain to shut off. So I called up one of the lesser-annoying people I work with and asked him what he was up to. I heard people cheering in the background, so I knew it had to be good.
“I’m at fight club,” he said over the din.
I was sure I’d heard him wrong.
“You should come down,” he then added.
I looked up the directions, programmed my GPS, and about half an hour later I was standing in a gutted warehouse near Apex, watching a couple of dudes wail on each other. That’s right, I was standing in a real life fight club. Only, fighters in the improvised ring were wearing gloves, there was a referee, and Tyler Durden wasn’t spouting philosophy about hunting and gathering.
The only rule I heard was to keep it above the belt. Other than that, you could do whatever you wanted and the fight lasted as long as it took for one of the fighters to either get knocked unconscious or tap out.
The last fight I watched was between a young guy and another guy who was probably in his mid-50’s or so. And even though the younger guy technically won the fight, the older guy left the ring with a smile on his face and patting the younger guy on the back. It was a good game, even if it was lost.
“You should do this,” my friend told me.
The next thing I knew, I was standing at the corner of the ring, hands taped, gloves on, and a burly dude looking at me like I’d just insulted his mother.
As my cousin Samantha likes to say, “I was scurrd.”