The World Of Backyard Amateur Boxing

Well our ANZAC day, Green Rd Amateur Boxing (GRAB) event went off yesterday to much fanfare and a whole lot of rain.

As we all know, I do enjoy my combat sports, and have trained in a few over the years. This, however, has never led me into a fight in “real life”. I am a not a proponent of violence (outside of sport, which I believe is fundamentally different from other forms of violence. I know this is up for debate with some of you, and that’s fine. I just don’t think it is the same thing. My opinion.) This day was not for me to prove myself, as I have received wisdom in my short 32 years here on the planet, and know that as much as I would love to test myself against these young pups, it is best for everyone that I didn’t.

I was concerned for the safety of my friends who were going to be boxing, and thus let myself get wrangled into reffing the event. Big John would have been proud.

2 fights went the distance (The lights, and the heavies) and the other 2 were ref stoppage early in the 2nd rounds (the middle and welterweights). Everyone came out friends at the end. Maybe with a bit more music in their ears than they were used to.

It was taped, so I’ll try and provide the link when it is up, as well as post some pics… of which many were taken.

The trick with events like this, is that now that the 8 guys have a bit of experience, they will get better and a bit more technical. Which makes it more dangerous, and less “we don’t really know what we are doing and get incredibly tired after only 3 rounds making it less likely that we will hurt anyone with the punches we are throwing”. So, I think they need to be careful where they go from here.

The Westside Boxing Crew (of whom I am affiliated and helped train a bit) went 3 for 4. The one we lost would’ve went the other way had we gone on just points (we tried to simplify it by going with a win/loss for each round based on points). He scored so many in the first round, and just barely lost the in the 2nd and third.

Anyways… no one was seriously injured, and everyone had a good time. It was a bumper afternoon.

**Westside**

Bleh

Been up to a bit… but nothing really blogworthy, and to be honest, haven’t had the desire to blog in a while. Facebook has lost it’s novelty, and the playoffs have started.

The last couple weekends we have made our way to the beach for a few days and I have been playing in the surf. For the first time since I have been here, I am feeling a inkling to maybe give surfing a go. Then my sister-in-law told me about the shark warning the had had the other day. So…..

There is something about having the ocean go from knee height to about 10 feet over your head in a matter of seconds that is very very cool.

And once again I wonder about wether to even keep this thing going. We’ll see.

LOTR

I have finally finished the entire series. I don’t read a whole lot of fictional stuff… to be honest I’d rather watch a movie for my fantasy genre, but I really liked this experience.

One of my favorite things was discovering what and how Peter Jackson changed Tolkien’s work to make the motion pictures. Things that were left out (Bombadill, and the Scourging of the Shire), words that were given to different characters to speak, what scenes they drew out a bit more and which ones they skipped through. I found it all very fascinating and didn’t feel disappointed or let down by the movie versions which I love.

I also marvel at how authors of these kinds of stories keep everything straight! Names of places and people and backstories… it is all quite remarkable to me that something coherant even comes out at the end.

With this small victory I have passed the half way point of the books on the night stand. At this pace, I’ll need to borrow some reading material in the next month or so.