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"Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not
fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it
my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will
not be disqualified for the prize."
(1 Corinthians 9:26-27)
St Paul was a fighter. I don't think he ever competed in the
ring, but that wasn't because he lacked the discipline or was
afraid of the pain.
I always say that to be a fighter you need to have two things
going for you. Firstly you need to have a lot of energy inside
that needs release. Secondly, you need to be not too concerned
about your own health. This fits the profile of most of our young
men perfectly - on the edge of the drug culture, full of
testosterone, and with no thought for the future. It also fits
perfectly the profile of another group - single fathers,
struggling to gain access to their children.
That was how I got into the fight game. I hadn't taken it up as a
teenager, and I certainly hadn't been born into it. My dad was a
priest for God's sake, and an academic. Fighting had not been my
birthright. I came in through the back door of pain and
loneliness and bitter struggle.
Separated, and struggling for the right to see my daughter, I had
made one half-hearted attempt at suicide already by that stage.
And I had met with my bishop the following day and he had told me
not to 'trade off' my situation (in other words, not to get too
comfortable). I appeared to be losing my family, my vocation, and
most of my friends at the same time. Full of emotional energy,
obsessed with thoughts of self-destruction, and drinking way too
much, I managed to find my way to the Mundine gym. It was my
decision not to go under, but to fight back.
Mundine's is situated in the middle of Everleigh Street, Redfern
- the roughest street in one of the roughest neighborhoods in our
city. Redfern is a largely Aboriginal suburb on the outskirts of
central Sydney. In recent years the government has come through
and 'cleaned it up' somewhat, which meant pushing a lot of the
local residents further out west. Even so, it is still a rough
area.
I had grown up in the vicinity of Everleigh Street. My dad had
been a lecturer at the Anglican seminary located only a few
blocks from this dark heart of Aboriginal Sydney. It was always
an odd location for the seminary. The ecclesiastical community
never had anything to do with the adjoining aboriginal enclave.
On the contrary, most persons associated with the religious
community dealt with their black neighbours by practising the
same sort of avoidance strategy that I'd learnt as a kid
scurrying quickly past the end of Everleigh Street and its
environs whenever circumstances put us unavoidably within its
reach.
Ironically this strategy had to be invoked every time you got off
a train from Redfern station. The platforms seemed to be designed
to feed directly into Everleigh Street! Of course I never made
the mistake of straying down that way myself, and as a youngster,
I had heard many a nasty story about the price paid by some of
the less wary.
None of this is to suggest that the reputation of Everleigh was
based on hearsay. I had seen plenty with my own eyes.
Countless times I had seen young toddlers and their slightly
older siblings wandering the streets at night while their parents
got drunk at the local. One night I watched as a stupid woman
stopped her car after these kids had thrown rocks at it. She got
out and tried to confront the kids about what they had done. The
result of course was that they found some bigger rocks and a
couple of bricks. They made quite a mess of that car.
My brother told me that he had witnessed a roll take place from
the top of the street in broad daylight. Some boys had pulled a
knife on a university student who had handed them his wallet. The
student had then located a nearby policeman and had pointed out
the boys to him, but the copper did nothing about it. He said he
didn't want to start a riot!
I had seen the bonfires that would be lit when the new phone
books or Yellow Pages directories were delivered. I had seen the
shells of burnt out cars in the street. I had seen plenty, and
had plenty of good reasons to never deliberately venture down
that street, which is why my first walk to the Mundine gym was
like wading through water - every step being a slow and
deliberate effort. But I was determined to become a fighter, and
I'd just as soon lose my life in Everleigh Street than give up on
my dream to have my day in the ring.
The exterior of Mundine's Gym is not designed to draw attention
to itself. You'd walk right past it if you didn't know it was
there. It's missing entirely that glittering windowed street
frontage with the sleek bodies of well-groomed athletes on
display for passers-by - the type that we associate with the
sorts of gyms where you pay a costly membership fee. Mundine's
has no membership fee. I don't remember there even being a sign
out the front. Mundine's looks like just another
housing-commission block, with its inglorious entrance at the
bottom of a stairwell. But you pick up that it's a gym long
before you reach the top of those stairs. The smell of liniment
hits you half way up - that manly smell that mingles so
harmoniously with the melodic whir of the skipping rope tap, tap,
tapping its way through another round.
This is what makes a real gym the smell of liniment, the sound of
the rope, the less rhythmical thwacking of glove to bag, and of
course the fighting. When you step inside Mundine's, you know
you're in a real gym. No pretty boys. No glamour workouts. No
white-collar boxercise sessions for indulgent professionals. Just
bodies, sweat, testosterone and blood.
They play hard at Mundine's. That's governed by the sort of guys
that show up there of course, but it's also embedded in the
architecture of the gym to some extent. The ring stands in the
centre of the building and it's a small ring, made for brawlers.
There is a small assortment of bags strung around the sides, but
no fancy speedballs or floor-to-ceiling bags, such that you could
justify turning up just to have a workout on the bags. There are
a few pieces of weights equipment too, but again not enough to
allow them to become a serious point of focus. No. The whole
structure is designed to channel you into the ring. Everything
else is just padding. That's the way it should be in a real gym.
I wore my clerical shirt and collar the first time I went there.
Even now I don't think it was an entirely stupid thing to have
done. I wanted to be up-front about who I was and where I was
coming from. Even so, I hadn't really thought through the effect
that this was going to have on the other boys at the gym, most of
whom were, initially, very reluctant to hit me. They got over it
though, particularly after they realised that I had no qualms
about hitting them. Within a couple of weeks I was coming home
each night bruised and bleeding from head to toe, and I knew I
was one of the lads.
Is it just me, or does every man need to go through something
like this at some time in his life - to know the joy of falling
into your bed aching with the wounds that your sparring partner
has inflicted on you that evening, and sleeping soundly in the
knowledge that your ring brother is likewise doing his best to
sleep off the impression that you made on him? I had many a
glorious sparring session during those first weeks and months at
Mundine's. They weren't pretty to watch I suppose, but they were
epic struggles of the human spirit so far as I was concerned.
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There are few things in life more deeply satisfying than a good
fight. A hard night in the ring is an enormous catharsis for a
man who is struggling with life, but it's more than that too.
When you step into a ring you're making a decision to take
control of your own destiny. The forces that oppose you are no
longer vague powers that threaten to overwhelm you from a
distance - the law, the courts, the system. No. Your opposition
takes on a clear material form in the shape of the other man
advancing on you from the other corner. To get into that ring and
to stay in that ring is to make a decision to give it a go - to
put your body on the line and to stand up to the punishment like
a man. Fighting is more than a sport. It's a way of life. It is
the defiant decision to confront your pain directly and not to be
overcome by it. Mundine's gym taught me that, or at least it
played a significant role.
There was another vital lesson I learnt at Mundine's - perhaps
even more important than what I learned about fighting. I learnt
to respect the fight community.
The fight community is a culture all of its own, and was
certainly spawned on an entirely different planet to the church
community. I'm sure that some Anglican church-goers must have
wondered why there are so many doctors and accountants in their
congregations and so few fighters. The truth is that most church
people just don't speak the same language as fighters.
The converse is also true. The fight community, as far as I can
see, has very little idea of what the church is on about. I don't
mean that fighters aren't spiritual guys. On the contrary, some
of the most godly and inspirational men I have met have been
fighters. And yet they have no point of contact with the
established church. The two groups just don't understand each
other at all. Never was this made clearer to me than on my fourth
visit to Mundine's gym.
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I had turned up quietly in my tracksuit and was wandering over to
the bench at the side of the ring where we tended to leave our
gear while we were training. A group of guys were huddled there
talking, and there was nothing particularly private about the
volume of their conversation. I think they were discussing
relationship problems, though I didn't overhear everything. What
I couldn't help hearing was one guy say very clearly 'So I
grabbed her, and I punched her in the fuckin' head'. He said it
loudly and enacted a downwards punching motion as he said it.
Then he noticed me standing nearby and suddenly felt very
self-conscious. 'Oh, sorry Father' he said. And then he corrected
himself. 'I punched her ... (and he said it very slowly and
deliberately) ... in the head'.
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If I'd had my wits about me that night I would have said
something clever like 'I don't think the Lord really gives a fuck
about your language brother, but I think He does care about your
wife.' As it was, I didn't say anything. I think I responded with
a feeble smile. At the time, I just couldn't work out how this
guy had ever got it into his head that, as a priest, I would be
more concerned about the fact that he swore than I would be about
the fact that he beat his wife? Nowadays I take that sort of
perception for granted.
I think it's the church that has to bear the responsibility for
the communication breakdown. So much of the church nowadays reeks
of a sort of insipid middle-class moralism that really does care
more about smoking and swearing than it does about domestic
violence or world hunger. I don't think the Lord Jesus or St Paul
ever intended to spawn any of these Christianized golf clubs that
call themselves churches. Personally, I suspect that Jesus and
the apostles would feel more at home in the average boxing gym
today than they would in the average church. Of course they
wouldn't like the threats and the violence, but they would love
the honesty. Fighters are very honest people.
One guy, again from the Mundine gym, summed it up for me. 'Around
here nobody stabs anybody in the back', he said to me. Then he
pointed to his heart and added emphatically: 'You stab here!'
That's why I have so much respect for the fight culture. I know I
can trust fighters. I know they won't stuff me round - smiling to
my face but stabbing me in the back when I turn around. I wish
the same could be said for all church people.
St Paul was a fighter. 'I do not fight like a man beating the
air' he says. They had the ancient Pankration fighting in his day
- a vicious form of no rules combat that was concluding event in
the original Olympics. Those guys certainly didn't 'beat the
air'. When Ulysses came home from the Trojan War, legend has it
that his own mother didn't recognise him. According to my friend
and former trainer Kon, legend has it that when the Pankration
champion came home from the Olympic Games, his own dog couldn't
recognise him! Those guys knew what real fighting is about.
St Paul would have made one tough bugger as a fighter. What I
wouldn't give to be able to jump into the old Pankration ring
with him to go a couple of rounds! You'd never knock him down
though. I suspect most of the apostles would have been like that
- warm big-hearted men, but as hard as nails in the ring.
I have a secret hope that when I get to heaven I'll be able to
take on some of those boys and try my luck. I guess it's not
everyone's idea of heaven, but it is mine.
About the Author
'Fighting' Father Dave Smith - Parish Priest, community worker,professional fighter, father of three. Dave is the only Australian in Holy Orders to turn pro boxer to help fund his work. He is Parish Priest in Dulwich Hill, Sydney,and has received numerous awards for his work with young people
Get a free preview of his book, 'Sex, the Ring & the Eucharist' when you sign up for Dave's newsletter at www.fatherdave.org
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