Last night my husband and I watched Facing Ali, a series of interviews with men who fought title bouts with The Greatist.
These guys are no doubt heroes, but what about the guys who sparred with Ali? What about Jimmy Ellis? Sure, the boxing legends spent several grueling minutes in the ring with Ali, but Ellis did it for twenty years.
Sparring isn’t fighting. Sparring the practice of sharpening your skills and challenging your partner to do the hard stuff. Boxers have coaches, but the coach isn’t usually doing the work with you. Your sparring partner is. This partner works with you, but doesn’t always have the same goals. You’re working on using a certain punch more efficiently; your partner’s working on stamina.
I look at people in the ring at my gym and sometimes wonder if they’re paired with the right person. Someone who’s inexperienced is SO happy to be getting attention from a fighter with more skills. But that fighter may not be the right sparring partner. It’s tricky.
Are you copping out by only working with people you know you could beat in a real fight?
Or maybe you’re trying to figure out—or establish—where you are in this weird kind of pecking order.
Or maybe you’re looking for a challenge. That’s what I want. But I’m looking for a meaningful challenge. I want to work with someone who has better skills than me AND help me see why it matters. I want to grow, not just get beaten up. I may not alway see exactly what the lesson was for that day, but it should still feel like a lesson—not just getting my ass kicked.
In general, I’m a lot choosier about who I spend my time with both inside and outside of the ring.
I spent too many years in a career where the people I should have been sparring with were basically saying, “You’ll never get better no matter how hard to try because you don’t have a particular piece of paper.” (I’m telling you, just having a card—the USA Boxing clearance for sparring—doesn’t buy you much, not even basic cred.) What i heard at work was “SIt over there for awhile and watch us make decisions” and “This place really sucks, so it’s too bad we have to suffer like this to keep money coming in.” I don’t do that anymore.
I’m not a small talk person, and while I don’t have to talk about the meaning of life all the time (though I could get used to that), I do want to feel like every exchange I have with someone means something. Because it can. Tiny little things. I remember the woman who was working at the gas station when I stopped late on the 2016 election day. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on TV. I don’t even know what she said to me, but that woman was kind. And I noticed when she wasn’t working any more. Somehow her just being there and being pleasant meant as much to me as the tone in the doctor’s voice when he called the next morning to say that my mom died.
When it comes to partnering, though, take a really close look at the person you spend the most time with. Who is that? For me it’s my husband Evan. We spend a lot of time together. We laugh A LOT. I mostly think he’s a better person than me. His faith is stronger. He connects comfortably with the kinds of people I’ve never been able to (like, children). I know that some people don’t look forward to going home to their parter and frankly that breaks my heart. Evan IS home. We both grow a little (almost) every day. But you gotta find that right one. I got the right one. An incredibly lucky break for me.