A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting by Sam Sheridan Read Free Book Online

fight would be to miss an unrepeatable opportunity. And somehow I couldn’t see losing; I just couldn’t imagine it.
    When I went downstairs for the afternoon session, I told Bippo, “I don’t care who he is, I’m going to kick his ass,” and Bippo smiled—he understood that braggadocio is part of gearing up for a fight. He understood, but he still thought I was in trouble.
    On the last day before the fight, resting in my room, I took a picture of my stuff hanging on the wall: my mongkol, my warm-up gear, my towel. Kum had made the mongkol out of thick red plastic string. I had reassured my mom via e-mail that it was blessed by Buddhist monks and would protect me. In a funny way, I was growing calmer.
     
     
    We drove down to Samrong, which was about twenty minutes away, and I could tell Anthony was nervous. Traffic was bad, and if it continued like this, we might not have enough time to prep. I stared out the window, watched the cars, and waited. Everything I could do was done. I was surprised at how relaxed I felt. I even found myself smiling.
    We got to Samrong with time to spare, and I met Bippo on the way in. I nodded hello but kept my head down. I didn’t really want to look at anybody I knew.
    I saw my opponent when I walked in the door of the stadium. I was taller than he was, and although he was as wide as a tree, height made a difference. He had a broad, pleasant face, and glasses, and his hair was cropped short. He was wearing karate gi pants and a T-shirt and his heavy forearms were covered in tattoos. We shook hands, smiling, and talked through our promoters. We nodded at each other, agreeing that this was a friendly match and we were not there to kill each other. Yeah, right, I thought. I may have been uninitiated, but I wasn’t stupid. This was a fight, not a sparring session, and he was going to try to hurt me. I knew I was supposed to be intimidated by him, but I was also aware that he wasn’t as cool as he pretended to be. Showing up in my Fairtex warm-up suit and being big and tall, I looked a lot more professional than I was.
    National Geographic was there to film a Westerner having his first muay Thai fight, part of a documentary they were doing on the sport, but it was easy to ignore them. I sat down in the stands, paranoid about wasting energy; I knew that I would need absolutely everything. Yaquit taped up my hands. Finally, it was me getting my hands taped—tape was different than the wraps, tighter, stronger, permanent. My opponent was walking around, a towel around his neck and both hands on it. He was big and burly, but, I reminded myself, thirty-eight years old. He should really sit down.
    Yaquit and I moved to the tables, and I lay down and got the hotoil massage. It tingled and then stung. We didn’t talk much. Johann and Bippo and a few other farang stood around, nervous. I had a new roommate at Fairtex, a giant Swede named Blue, who was one of my cornermen and probably more nervous than I was. Blue was about as unsuitable for muay Thai as one could be, but he loved the sport and the training. He was a Fairtex lifer: He’d been there for twelve months some time ago, and when I was there, he was planning on staying for another year. He was seriously overweight—I would put him around 250—though the weight was sloughing off him in the heat. He was primarily there to lose weight; the first time he’d come to Fairtex he’d lost more than fifty pounds. Blue was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, without a mean bone in his body. The Thais loved him, both for his gentle demeanor and for his persistence in the face of his physicality.
    You had to give Blue credit. He wasn’t there to fight, and he didn’t have much form, but he tried. There was a trainer for the Lumpini fighters who in all my time there never spoke to me or looked at me once; he didn’t have any time for or interest in the silly farang. But he would talk to Blue. Blue had won them over by nearly killing