by David P. Greisman - In his dressing room he sits, a fighter alone in his thoughts, an artist deliberating over an empty canvas, a writer whose story is still being told.
He has a setting: 400 square feet, more or less, an elevated stage in a coliseum where the masses gather, seeking either his triumph or his demise. That desire ?victory or defeat, success or failure ?is the driving force, the conflict, internal and external. There is a man who will punch him hundreds of times that night, sending forth hundreds of pounds of forc e cushioned only by eight or 10 ounces of leather and padding.
He sits, alone in his thoughts. What is to come soon. What has come before.
Each fight, at most, may last 47 minutes a night. Many fighters, at most, will have but four of those nights a year. In-between, their finely sculpted forms balloon, their bodies heal, their minds find distractions and their lives continue. But each punch is absorbed forever.
Miguel Cotto has taken 267 punches with him for the past seven months, 267 bruising uppercuts, thudding hooks and pounding crosses that left his lips swollen and his mouth agape, that brought crimson streaming from his nose and spattered about his face.
Kelly Pavlik has carried 148 shots with him for four months, 148 blows that came accurately and efficiently, that came faster and harder than expected from an old man not quite too old to give a young man a beating, a humbling.
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Cotto and Pavlik had been hit before. But with those 415 punches, Antonio Margarito and Bernard Hopkins gave them something neither had experienced before: a loss.
That first blemish on their professional ledgers took away their momentum, their confidence, their auras of invulnerability. For months, each carried one night with him. Their bodies healed. Their minds went elsewhere. Their lives continued. But their losses are forever. [details]
He has a setting: 400 square feet, more or less, an elevated stage in a coliseum where the masses gather, seeking either his triumph or his demise. That desire ?victory or defeat, success or failure ?is the driving force, the conflict, internal and external. There is a man who will punch him hundreds of times that night, sending forth hundreds of pounds of forc e cushioned only by eight or 10 ounces of leather and padding.
He sits, alone in his thoughts. What is to come soon. What has come before.
Each fight, at most, may last 47 minutes a night. Many fighters, at most, will have but four of those nights a year. In-between, their finely sculpted forms balloon, their bodies heal, their minds find distractions and their lives continue. But each punch is absorbed forever.
Miguel Cotto has taken 267 punches with him for the past seven months, 267 bruising uppercuts, thudding hooks and pounding crosses that left his lips swollen and his mouth agape, that brought crimson streaming from his nose and spattered about his face.
Kelly Pavlik has carried 148 shots with him for four months, 148 blows that came accurately and efficiently, that came faster and harder than expected from an old man not quite too old to give a young man a beating, a humbling.
=0 A
Cotto and Pavlik had been hit before. But with those 415 punches, Antonio Margarito and Bernard Hopkins gave them something neither had experienced before: a loss.
That first blemish on their professional ledgers took away their momentum, their confidence, their auras of invulnerability. For months, each carried one night with him. Their bodies healed. Their minds went elsewhere. Their lives continued. But their losses are forever. [details]
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