The Champ

The bell rang for the fourth round. I jumped off the stool with Marty screaming, “Go get, ‘em, Champ!”

In front of me was Big Mackie the Motown Marvel waving his red gloves at me to come forward.

“Take it like a man,” he seemed to be saying, a glint in his demon-red eyes.

I came forward, dodged, weaved, faked a left and followed with a blistering right upper-cut, and the next thing I knew I was on my ass and Motown was doing the bunny hop back to his corner.

I got up and the two refs were shaking my gloves to see if I had any strength left, and apparently, they thought I did because they backed away and the Motown twins were coming my way.

Now there are times when you attack and times when it’s simply better to back-pedal, but this time I was doing a full sprint in reverse. The Motowns kept coming forward as I was trying my best to pick up speed backwards with the whole arena now booing at me. I could still hear Marty calling from my corner, “Go get ‘em, Champ!”

Somehow these “words of wisdom” struck a nerve with me as I was awful damn busy “back-pedaling” and I foolishly felt compelled somehow to take this moment to scream over to Marty, "Don't tell me what to do!" and in that instant I felt my jaw break, and then my nose being split in half, blood everywhere, the crowd on their feet cheering, and me flat on my back with the refs waving their arms to stop the fight. As I lay there, the thought came to me, maybe I should be the manager and I could tell that little pip-squeak, Marty, to “Go get ‘em, you idiot!”

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