Its been a while since I have been on… Sooooo the forum was hacked? No wonder my old ID was toast!
Repost of this story.
A couple of years ago I spent about a year training a lady “Jane” to be a boxer. “Jane” was the daughter of a friend of mine, she was an exceptional athlete straight out of high school, She didn’t want to go to college and didn’t want to stay in Podunk Kansas (where she was born and raised) anyhow she started getting into minor trouble with the cops and no plans for her life. So this friend contacted me and wanted to know if I could train her to box. So I took off to Podunk, KS tried her out and see if she was trainable… she was more of the street fighter bar room brawler and was on the small side about 5’6” and 120 pounds but even Ray Charles could see her potential and she was impressive… and she was tough as they come. What I liked the most about her she could focus her attention like a laser. So I took her on. She was very easy to train. As the months of training went by, it was time to get her some in the ring experience (before moving to the next level of competition and also make some money.) I had her boxing the regional nite club circuit and other exhibition venues, all the time she kept refining her technique, as it turned out she could pick apart ladies that had 50 pounds on her with extra height and reach, with those lightening fast reflexes, precision and speed. She went 10 and 0 with 4 KO’s and I think won about 50g’s in prize money, pretty fast. She developed into a competitive force to be reckoned with in a very short time.
One day she walked into my office and showed me an advertisement, the ladies topless boxing world championships in Dresden Germany and announced “ I want to go”. @ 19 years old I didn’t think she was ready mentally or physically and told her so, she was adamant about it and said she was going to Dresden “if I trained her or not and if I went or not… she was going” So I gave in… if for no other reason than I didn’t want her to travel 3000 miles to get her ass kicked.
So we began training… first problem was she had never trained or fought topless and was incredibly self conscious about being topless, this turned into huge mental block and mentally she was off her game. We finally got her over that hurdle, (so I thought) then the issue of unrestricted boobs bobbing around while punching and moving changed the dynamics of her style and we made some more adjustments. We got past all that and she was back in her old groove and after a month training we were ready and set off to Germany.
We got to Dresden a few days early and watched the preliminary rounds, scouting, analyzing and strategizing the opposition. “Janes” round came up at 8 am on the 3rd day to an empty hall, just the judges. Her opponent was a lady from Albania… this lady looked like she had never been in the ring before, a brawler with no style or form… totally out of her league, “Jane” blocked a few punches otherwise she was never touched and KO’ed her opponent in the first round, impressive to say the least and it caught the promoters eye… not to mention “Jane” was cute... very cute.
For the Semi finals “Jane” was paired up with a big dark haired bohemeth from the Ukraine for the marquee evening fight the following evening… we had saw this Ukrainian fighting the day before and I knew she was going to be a real handful… a serious problem if she was able to use her assets and land long range punches were going to be a real problem, because she had about 4” of height, a longer reach and about 30 pounds on “Jane” and she was well trained and in top condition. The plan was keep “Jane” defensive covering on the outside, blocking long range bombs and offensively work on the inside, using her speed and precision blocking to methodically pick the Ukrainian apart little by little and wait for the Ukrainian to make a fatal mistake then Jane nail her for all its worth with an upper cut or jab.
Fight time was 7pm, totally unlike the first fight, Because the first fight hardly anyone was there... this time there was a crowd, it was noisy, the cameras were rolling, the big screen was on and Cameras flashing, “Jane” developed the deer in the headlight look and her old mental block came back… “I cant fight topless in front of all these people… its being filmed, blah blah blah” ok I admit I was having a WTF kinda moment and I got a little pissed off because this was her idea and we didn’t come all this way and spend all this money to just concede and go home… (which we should have done!) after a long pep talk… I thought I had her focused, undivided attention to the task at hand and thought after the first time a punch landed she would forget all about her bare boobs and get down to business.
First round was a total train wreck, no focus, she spent all her time covering the wrong way… covering her boobs, while taking some viscious head shots. .. she was plenty tough I will give her credit for that, It hurt just watching the beating she was getting… even a bloody nose didn’t snap her out of the “protect the boobage at all cost” mindset. Between rounds I thought I had her head back in the fight and we would be ok after this initial stage freight.
Bell rang for the second round and she was still covering her boobs and about the time I yelled “defensive form”, the Ukrainian caught her right on the chin and down she went for the count. It was pretty dramatic, she was ko’ed cold and flat on her back in the middle of the ring for all the world to see, the promoter had the sound system rigged up to the Pat Travers song Boom Boom Out Goes the Lights every time a KO’ed happened. It was s pretty embarrising and humiliating situation… Her being KO’ed was the best film clip of the total championship series and the promoters kept showing it time and time and time again… the punch and her out cold in the middle of the ring, with the song “boom boom out go the lights” blaring in the back ground. She saw this a couple of times and the image totally got in her head.
It was a long trip home,” Jane” was totally devastated, along the way she lost her confidence, desire and drive… nothing I could say to make it better or snap her out of this mental funk. End the end I lost a friend over this (some how taking her to Germany was all my fault) “Jane” quit boxing and ended up in prison on a drug charge. Funny how fate works sometimes.
True story… I think the morale of this story is, doesn’t matter if you are a man or woman, but if you are going to try to go pro, Don’t rush things and don’t get too greedy. This is a very cool sport… enjoy it for what it is.
Derf
