"Fight Night" Disappointment

Last night the fifth boxing night that my friends and I put on happened. Let me give you a little background on the event. It all started a little over 2 years ago when my friends and I rented "Fight Night: Round 2" for ps2. We all created boxers in the game with our exact heights, weights, and appearances. For a couple of days we had tournaments with our digital representations before we asked ourselves, "Hey, why don't we just really box?" So we did.

A couple of my friends bought boxing gloves and head gear, everyone bought their own mouthpiece, and we had the first real-life "Fight Night" in a friend's back yard. Everyone came up with a "character" that they would play for the matches (similar to pro-wrestling, I guess). We filmed the event and I edited it into a 10-minute video, which we have done with every Fight Night since.

When it was my time to fight, I became Cameron "Captain Insanity" Heger. I wasn't very good. I fought my good friend Tyler "The Mystical Dragon" Ceola the first time and lost the decision.

A month or two later, we had the 2nd Fight Night, this time with several spectators present. "Captain Insanity" lost his 2nd bout to Ryan "Pilgrim Rest" Toomer. It was disappointing. At this point, I was the only one of my friends with 2 losses and 0 wins.

Fight Night round 3 happened a significant amount of time later (I dont' remember exactly when). Many of our friends came out to watch the boxing. I suffered my worst loss yet.

At this point, I knew I had to do something--I couldn't keep on losing all of my matches. And instead of doing something to improve my actual boxing skill, I relied on superstition and blamed my losses on my name ("Captain Insanity")--so I changed my name to Cameron "The Bad Minton" Heger. The funny thing is, I did actually win my fight at the next fight, which happened probably 6 months after Fight Night round 3, with probaby 15 spectators or so. "The Bad Minton" was officially undefeated.

We started planning the fifth Fight Night at the beginning of the summer. I had the idea to try to get into actual decent boxing shape. Before I had a match lined up, I started training every day for the 3 weeks leading up to the fight. Ellen hand-crafted custom boxing shorts for me. I borrowed an old bath robe from my dad. I was going to get a 2nd win.

So last night, it went down. I fought a friend I had known for a long time (going all the way back to elementary school). He had some size on me, but I figured I would be in better shape. Anyway, the bell rang and I came out much more aggressive and confident than I had ever been before. It was the first time I had ever really had much power behind my punches, and I wasn't tiring very fast at all. It seemed that I had won the first round by a pretty big margin. So I was ready for the next one. I came out for the 2nd round and Dylan was a little more aggressive, but it was pretty even for the first half of the match. I knew I would have more stamina the longer the fight went, so I wasn't worried.

Then, it happened. I dislocated my kneecap while trying to dodge a punch. I went down in a lot of pain. I knew I wouldn't be able to fight anymore. My spirits were crushed. I had lost the fight on account of "technical knockout." Its one thing to simply get out-boxed, but its another thing altogether to have something like this ruin the fight. And so The Minton had a record of 1 and 1.

I must say, I still had fun. It was a fun night of friendly competition (as it usually is), and there will be other matches for me. I'll just have to make sure that I bring my knee braces.
-Cameron

p.s. If you like pop, soul, or rock n' roll, do yourself the favor of buying the new Spoon album "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." It is quite fantastic.