pom ja ben Nak Muay

In a few minutes laying on my bed I'll rest some frozen peas, the bag was left over from my vasectomy, on my right shin. As valuable as my junk, my shin was further damaged in sparring today along with my left knee. They both feel stiff and sore. The worry and anxiety are beginning to set in.

Today while sparring, I slipped... maybe I slipped too much. Will my footing be so unsure during the fight? Will I become gassed out in the second round? Will my kicks lack power? Will I lazily drop my hands? Will my knee still hurt? My shin feel weak? Has my ability to parry the teep significantly improved? What about my ability to knee spar? Will I remember to plant my right foot when I left hook? Will I crunch my body too far down when I block?

I tell myself not to worry about these things but they cross my mind. Mike Regnier said that all fighters get nervous before their fights. Maybe the first one you get more nervous than the others, but this is my fifth fight and still the nerves. Its not until I step into the ring that I get unbearably nervous, right now I'm just badly nervous.

There's a real surreallness to fighting. It just feels like an out of the ordinary experience, an almost of the body experience. Suddenly I'm no longer fighting but my body moves. I imagine that I'm Samkor as my hips switch and I throw a left kick. I'm Bukaw as I grab onto my opponent's shoulder and pull him into my knee. I'm Raymond Dekker, the turbines of hell, as I hook my opponent. I'm Mike Regnier as I fake, fake, and throw a right kick into my foe. Where once there was a dorky, cynical skinny vegan boy is now a stick figure who believes he's someone else.

There are some good points to this smoker (my fifth). Its at pacific ring, where I train, in Oakland. There are a ton of fighters from my gym fighting, some of whom I am very excited about seeing in the ring. There's Nelson, an extremely technical fighter (but he has poor hands), David the ex-cal football player, possibly Shalon (if she gets a match up) and Byron a hard hitting south paw. It is also another step towards fighting at an amateur level. In all probability I will be fighting at an amateur level at the end of the summer, or early fall. My hope is to fight a few times (once, twice, maybe three times) before I go to thailand. By then I'll have my arsenal of weapons and will turn the sticks and stones I may have into spears and hammers.

The next few days will mainly be more cardio work. Resting up and maintaining my conditioning. In the morning I'll go running with Stefan then go to the class tomorrow night. Thursday I'll go into the gym and skip rope for a five rounds, and shadow box for five rounds. Friday will look the same.

Maybe I'll be lucky and break a leg, his.