Champion Memoirs

All I remember is that it started with a one, two and it ended with a bang. Drop dead silence echoes across the room. Sounds…ringing sounds. The smell of burnt leather and blood fills my nose with a taste of iron victory. My muscles tense up as beads of sweat roll off my shoulders. My right arm, stiff, knees are wobbly. Fists tighter than the Gordian knot, clenched onto what little oxygen I had left. Wrists are shot, hanging on by the skin and cloth wraps. Grounded, I melt towards the canvas, fists in the air victoriously clawing for a breath. Someone cut me loose from these ropes. It was all a blur, hazy, glossy-eyed. I feel like millions of metal balls are bouncing all over, rattling inside my head. I don’t remember a thing. All I remember is a ding, staring up at the heavenly lights as a flooded roar fills my ears, drowning out the white noise. I don’t remember a thing, but my body does. My bruised ribs memorized each hook. My melon sized eye felt out every jab. My chest fully committed to that piercing kick. My hinged jaw kissing every single one of his uppercuts. My body remembers…It remembers pulling back the trigger, it remembers letting it go. It remembers each crackle in the bone, each tear in the muscle. Shotgun pellet bruised spots riddle up and down my arms and chest, tattooed memories on my face reminding me that I should’ve kept those hands up. I should’ve rolled with each swing, kept my shoulders tight every time I shot the pistol, and pivoted my foot and hips with each swing of my cannon. It remembers the face, the expression of a deer caught in headlights, its head cocking back lifelessly onto the floor. The blood painting on the mat, a canvas in a steel cage full of animals. I carry a visceral paint brush colored red. I strike a crooked Mona Lisa smile as I grit my bloody teeth staring down the body of a 6 foot 4 giant. I felt like I just painted the sixteenth chapel all over this ring. It was telling a story of David and Goliath through our bruised knuckles and battered faces. This is what happens when you put animals in a cage, they get violent, their true colors turn red, black and blue come out. Fading in and out of consciousness I grasp tightly onto the ropes, my corner man comes and helps me up, carrying me on his shoulder back home, to my corner. Someone pours cold water over my head, a sudden euphoric high hits me like a joint of Mary Jane, it feels like a damn baptism. My corner man pulls the gloves off of my shaking hands. They feel like I got struck by lightning and grabbed the bolt by its tail mastering it and honing it into precise sharp strikes and movements. The shock of it all I look up and see my opponent sitting up on the mat just as dazed as I am, but he doesn’t look like raggedy Ann doll or a used up punching bag like myself, lucky bastard who knew he couldn’t take a counter to a glass jaw. I force myself up, I penguin my way over to him ever so slowly.  I stare down at him; he stares back daringly ready for another round. I extend my hand and smile, He smiles back and grabs mine, pulling him up, almost falling over myself. He says to me, “Great match” as he raises my fist in the air, I let out a roar loud enough to hear outside the stadium. I am a warrior; I am a gladiator of the ring.