By Bart Barry–
The temperature in the parking lot is a reminder just how badly abused is the word “sweltering” by Americans anywhere above of the 30th parallel, a plane deeper than most of the Deep South. Heavy with wet, the heat does not sap or wilt or hang or haunt but envelops, and then saps and wilts and hangs and haunts.
Outside Club Cabana, a mixed-ethnic locale that began as a Latin revue and will be this afternoon too but whose seal-brown wood door sports a sign prohibiting what hats and baggy shirts anticipate Lil’ Money, not Banda Ensalada de Frutas, a few hangerson lull with a fewer fighters, and no, there is never a doubt, even before eyes innocent of pugilism, which man in a group of four pays bills by experiencing and causing pain with other men. That toughguy American author – who wrote like this, and this is how he wrote – called bullfighters’ eyes cold and dead, because of death, one inferred, and that marks their difference with prizefighters’ eyes, whether debuting or in a fiftieth match. Prizefighters’ eyes can be lifeless during fightweek, casualties of weightmaking’s demon fraternity, Dehydration & Starvation, but their eyes sparkle during combat, and keep sparkling for days to come, unless they get rolled white or shuttered.
The slovenly dressed moons that revolve round prizefighters use transitive verbs like hospitalize and kill. Prizefighters do not. Do unto others and have done unto you, they silently observe – the Silverish Rule. Children of chaotic circumstances, usually, they crave a purchased respite from violence and borrow the language of their moons’ vicarious achievements during fightweek to increase future purses because folks who’ve not experienced death’s ultimate monotony dote on its metaphors, and often buy ringside tickets.
“I don’t know what hap – oh wait, is this on?” says a handsome man in his twenties, accoutered in black guayabera, black slacks, black socks, black loafers. “OK, I’ll run the podium, then, if Marcus cain’t make it.”
At the far wing of the polyester-skirted dais’ 15-chair span sits Ronnie “Excuses” Velazquez, a sweetheart chap who learned to box in the army and is dogged as anyone, dogged in a way his 0-3 (2 KOs) record belies radically enough to make doggedness an antonym for wisdom. Ronnie’s nom de guerre was not chosen but given him by an exasperated gymworker who mistook in Ronnie’s smiling reasons a passel of pretexts instead of honest embarrassment about his impossible predicament of single fatherhood, working 60 weekly hours while making a go at prizefighting – kids’ mother still in Afghanistan. Mother, not mom, because of the divorce.
Six days out, Ronnie’s scheduled opponent has him by two weightclasses, and while the promoter promises the contracted weight is different from the billing weight and Ronnie suspends disbelief acrobatically, they both know the contract means nothing because a member of the state commission has a son and two prospects on the card, and Ronnie’s pride will put him in that Saturday ring to buy his kids’ school clothes. They would rather handmedowns than fatherlessness, so it goes unsaid.
“This guy is what I like to call ‘a warrior’,” says the emcee promoter. “He’s had tough, tough losses. Everyone said he shoulda’won two. Thing is, I told him, ‘This is what you do to take it to the next level, eh?’ Margarita over there, before we kicked-off this presser, Margarita, y’know, the owner of this fine place, she told me, ‘I don’t ever want one of my sons to have to fight a monster like that Velazquez cabrón!’ I couldn’t believe it. That’s what a warrior he is.”
When his rambunctious seven-year-old gets too rowdy, Ronnie corrals him by the shoulders in the gentlest way for a father to turn the feat. For quelling his masculine rage publically and legally and violently, and for once being the target of his father’s drunken lunacy, “Excuses” handles his children too softly by half.
“I wish it was at a lower weight,” Ronnie says during his time with the handheld mic. “It is what it is, I guess.”
The local daily’s tireless, tired veteran navigates the conference’s midway point under a spell of indifference – Is the reason why you don’t cover my son because you hate the Mexicans? / I love about you how writed mijo, because you are great writer! / You ain’t got a clue on boxing, pinche joto! / Best writer in the whole country, I saying to everybody, right here – and arrives beside a fellow writer anonymous enough to wear a nametag and lanyard. The two chat, oblivious of what happens onstage, about the moribund periodical industry and their shared interest, trending moribund itself, until the charismatic young promoter in Riverwalk-foodservice attire gives the veteran reporter a special shoutout from the podium for the promotional article he expects in Monday’s edition.
The main-event fighter, an undefeated lightweight from the local-gym scene who invites a donnybrook even from novices, says his fight will be a great one, thanks everyone, and plays to the promoter’s implication his opponent didn’t make the gathering because fear, not traffic, deterred him.
“Everybody else got here,” says the promoter. “Anyways, I need to say a quick thank you to Ropa Increíble, one of our sponsors and the best place to get school uniforms or custom-logo tees. Also Mil Corazones Auto – on the corner of Reyes and Durango, beside the Washateria. And my moms, of course, for making this all possible, because without her, sin mi mama, I would not be here!”
In a lightless spot just behind where the dining room becomes the club stands the local welterweight who was to be next week’s co-main until he got spearchiseled earlier in the month by a Lithuanian, TKO-5. The other guy wore those Everlast gloves Mayweather said Maidana couldn’t wear, and they shouldn’t be legal because they felt like he was getting hit with bare knuckles, and the other guy was really strong. Now his medical suspension reads: 60 days.
“Can’t wait to get back in,” he says. “I feel sorry for my next opponent.”
Bart Barry can be found on Twitter @bartbarry
