Watching a French rugby game on television recently I saw a French reservist come on to the field punching his own head.
In 1998, while watching France play England at the Stade de France, I saw a large French player do the same thing – running onto the field punching his own head using both fists. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!
It was as if he was saying, “Head! Just get used to this because for the next couple of hours – allowing for injury time – you are going to get knocked around tres terrible!”
The first time I witnessed this strange behaviour was in 1993 during a boxing match on television.
Boxing was never my game. I did a bit at school but my problem was that my nose would spurt blood as soon as the bell went for round one.
n this day in 1993, having nothing better to do, I was switching through the channels as one does when one’s mind has gone, when I saw this hooded boxer, Louis Gent of Britain.
He was moving down the aisle towards the ring with a theatrically mean expression. Gent was prancing, skippityskip, like a schoolgirl dancing along a pavement trying to avoid stepping on the cracks, and he was punching the air as if he had something against sparrows.
I felt he needed professional help.
Then came his opponent, Nigel Benn, also of Britain. Unlike Gent, whose skin was a shade lighter than that of a plucked French hen, Benn’s skin was boot-polish black.
Benn was punching his own head as he walked down the aisle – a habit, I thought, that must have caused his mother considerable anxiety.
As the two danced around in the ring glaring belligerently at one another, I noticed the black man had “Dark Destroyer” embroidered on his gown and the white man had “Lethal Weapon”.
This was to be the welterweight championship of the world or some such place.
The MC was shouting into a microphone. At a boxing match, everybody shouts. This is perfectly normal for a boxing match.
When a commentator asks an expert sitting right next to him what he thinks about the last round, the question is shouted with the same volume one normally reserves for asking a Bulgarian peasant for directions to Panagyurischte.
And the expert bellows back so that his neck veins stand out like ship’s hawsers.
he announcer informed us that Gent was the one wearing red shorts and Benn was the one wearing blue. This saved drawing attention to the fact that one was white and the other black.
Early in the first round the white man began to bleed copiously. Even his back began to bleed.
In the second round he went down five times – I had the impression he was looking for his teeth.
The commentator kept shouting, “Gent is hurt! Gent is hurt!”
An expert was more clinical, “Gent is hurt bad!”
Yet we could all see that Gent was hurt bad. In fact, he looked as if he had fallen off the north face of the Matterhorn. We could even have told them who did it (it was the guy in the blue shorts).
At the end of the round, the referee stopped the fight and declared Benn the world champion. Benn then did an amazing thing: he gave Gent a big kiss.
I considered punching my own head each morning instead of doing as I usually do – beating my chest and shouting “Tora! Tora! Tora!” – but I never remember until around 10am and by then I am usually in the office or at a traffic light and this is not a good time to do it.
Filed under: General | Tagged: boxing, humour, sport, stoep talk
