Opening Night

We had two fighters entered in the Indianapolis Golden Gloves last night. The brothers Dan and Joe were both scheduled to fight but Joe's opponent couldn't make weight, so Joe won in a walkover. He's now scheduled to fight on the 25th. Dan looked every bit the rookie that he was and lost when the referee stopped the contest in the second round after Dan recieved a punch to the throat. Dan's opponent looked like he was put together from parts of a big oak tree and had a punch to match the size of his arms. I'm glad I didn't have to fight the guy. While Dan was disappointed with his performance, he's got what it takes to be a good boxer and should show considerable improvement with some more sparring time in the gym.

It looks like we might have to scratch one of our fighters for the tourney. I took Robert to the emergency room Wednesday evening after he lost partial sight in one eye. It turns out that he broke a blood vessel while sparring. He was scheduled to see an ophthalmologist yesterday morning and I would imagine the doctor is going to tell him to lay off for a while. It's too bad, he won his division and was named Fighter of the Tournament for his division last year. You definitely don't want to take a chance with you eyesight, however. In a sport that is based on hitting people in the head, you definitely need to minimize the risks. He isn't scheduled to fight until the final night, however, so he may be able to compete.

Just a little item in the "food for thought" column: We have 12 fighters entered in a tournament with 160 contestants. If my 1:00 am math serves me correctly, that's 7.5% of the fighters from our little gym. The Indiana Golden Gloves covers the whole state except for a couple of counties but does include a couple of counties from Kentucky, if I remember correctly. If seems rather odd that you can only find 160 people of the ages roughly 14 -34 who are dedicated and tough enough to try their hand at amateur boxing. This is something I'll probably be commenting on in the future. I need to think about this a little more.