Fight Club, Part 2 of 4
This entry is continued from: Fight Club, Part 1 of 4
The first round wasn’t actually that bad. I bobbed and I weaved, I pretended like I was actually landing good punches, until of course he landed a pretty solid strike against my left cheek, eventually resulting in a black eye.
I went down.
The referee stepped in and asked me if I was okay. I wanted to tell him, “I’m fine… if your definition includes hearing ringing in my ears.” My actual answer was something along the lines of, “mgrhghrrrgh.”
I got up and round two began.
The next round was actually much better than the first, probably because my opponent knew he could probably kill me if he wanted to and I sensed he was holding back. Thus, I actually did pretty well.
Back when I was in high school, I got to talking to an art class friend of mine. He was a big burly guy and on this spring day, he was talking to one of his other friends about a fight that had broken out in the school’s common area earlier that morning. I’d been about 10 feet away from the fight when it happened, and saw it all.
He then said something about the guy who had been knocked out during that fight as the person who had “won.”
I asked, “How did he win?”
As it was explained to me, when a fight breaks out in a school, whoever lands the most punches is the winner. I then asked, “You mean to tell me, if you and I started fighting right now, and I landed a thousand punches, and you knocked me out with one hit, I would still be the winner?”
“Yeah,” was his answer.
Meanwhile, south of Apex and back in the present, I was “winning” this fight. I went for his middle and just kept punching, convinced that high school lunchroom fighting rules applied. I was totally wrong.