Obstacles, sometimes some swimming, and running up dirt paths in the rain. He always comes in at or near first in his age group and overall. It's curious, because when he boxed, he did most of his conditioning on these fancy gym machines, rather than doing his roadwork on the old dirt roads that my brother & I did long ago when we boxed.
I'm just glad that he doesn't box any more. And not only because he was too much like my brother -- get hit in a fight, and defense was out the door. "That didn't hurt" doesn't matter to the judges. My brother took more punches in 87 fights than I did in 329. But all the old fighters of my generation agreed that my boy was the hardest puncher this region ever produced. Even in sparring .... the last session before the finals one year, he was sparring his cousin, who won the super heavyweight title three days later. He dropped his cousin with body shots a couple times, and I had to stop it early. The top promoter of amateur boxing in upstate NY used to joke about how many guys came up with excuses not to fight him.
It's not that he won every fight. In his last loss, which was in the finals of the gloves one year, he was ahead on all three judges' cards. But he got clipped -- hard -- and I can tell everything I need to know by a fighter's legs. Despite my cousin assisting me in the corner yelling, "What the fuck are you doing?" I got up and threw in the towel. Much of the crowd booed me. My son was furious. But 30 minutes later, he could not remember what had happened. One punch can do real damage. I wanted him to hang it up then, but the next year he talked me into one more tournament, which he won with no problem. After that, his son was born, and the entire focus of his life changed.
Equally unsettling was when my 105 lb daughter started boxing in Boston. Yikes! And she was good, but I wasn't happy. She thought I would be, in part because she competed out of the last gym that Rubin visited. She said she wanted to make me proud. I said that I was proud that her employment in Boston included working in a law office on immigration, teaching part-time at the college, and working for the state attorney general. I wasn't impressed with that boxing club's trainer, and when I would see my daughter and a few of her teammates, I would show them things they never learned in Boston. (My daughter, who now lives in Europe with her husband and baby girl, will be here for a visit next week.)
At this point in life, I both love and hate boxing. I've trained amateur and pro fighters, with every amateur I trained since 1975 winning at least one Golden Gloves titles. Zero losses in the pro ranks. After my son's last fight, I was asked to be a co-trainer for the nationals team. Years ago, I'd have loved that. But my heart was no longer in it. So these days, I prefer races!
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