As they announced for the fighters of today's main event to enter the ring, I updated my Facebook status with this:
Cheering for a fellow Korean female fighter or cheering for a visiting fellow foreign female fighter,... — feeling uncomfortable watching this fight
Today wasn't the first time I've had to sit through a fight feeling torn between who to cheer for, the home corner or the away corner. And, come to think of it, this wasn't the first time I've experienced this with today's particular Korean female fighter, Park Ji Hyun. Ji Hyun is an amazingly talented fighter. With her long reach, fast hands and solid use of her body weight to back her punches, she clearly is a force to reckon with. She's also been the opponent to friends of mine -- Jujeath Nagaowa from the Philippines, Jodie Esquibel from the States and Krisztina Belinszky from Hungary. Both Jujeath and Jodie returned twice to Korea actually, for rematches. So I've watched as such friends have travelled here, stepped in the ring to fight her and gave amazing battles but lost. The IFBA President had accompanied my friends, meaning she attended their weigh-ins, handpicked fair judges, and made sure the ladies were treated as professional athletes accordingly. Today I watched as another visiting fighter stepped into the ring to take on Ji Hyun but she didn't have the benefit of the IFBA President and I had questioned how fair this fight was going to be long before today even began.
Today's fighter was that of Toress, a Mexican fighter who had travelled here with her coach and who I am assuming here was her mother. The arrangement of this fight was strange from the get go but I wasn't really aware of it until the IFBA President personally called me from the States to talk to me regarding it. Several phone calls, numerous text messages and a few emails later and it was obvious, those involved really didn't know the finer details of the fight. Ji Hyun risked losing her IFBA if she didn't defend it so she took the fight but she didn't anything about the promoter or how the fight was arranged. "This is Korean boxing" was all I could really offer to the IFBA President to justify the confusion of the whole situation. Do you know what it's like to have the IFBA President call you up and you have next to no extra information on what's going on with Korea's boxing? Well, I do and I was embarrassed at my pitiful answer because I do love boxing and do respect Korea's boxers, we're a tight community, but those that run this nation's boxing keep us in the dark and are much too preoccupied with their own spats and politics.
So there she stood today, in the away corner, Torres. No IFBA President and no fans. She had only two people in the entire arena cheering her on and in her corner. Snickers and I decided to add to their numbers and so we got our small crew from Hulk's to cheer her on as well.
The boxing community in Korea is quite small and quite most of my former opponents and even many of my potential opponents -- other female fighters in my fighting weight class. Ji Hyun and I have occasionally text messaged each other as do other boxers and club coaches too. When I won my fight in Thailand, I was absolutely thrilled and so pumped to have several of them, like Korea's champion boxers Kim Dan Bi and Yuh Hye Jung, personally call me up and wish me a huge congrats. Female fighters here are like that, very supportive of each other despite possibly being each other's so-called rivery.
I sat there, totally feeling in limbo with who to cheer for, Torres or Ji Hyun. On the one hand, I felt somewhat obligated to cheer for Torres after all she was the visiting fighter. I could totally relate to being the visiting fighter, dealing with the stress and the extra hardships on her mental part of the game that comes with living out of a hotel, eating another country's food, and struggling to navigate through the few days stay away from home. But then there's Ji Hyun, a female whom I relate with because she and I are both living here in a country where females stepping into the ring is not exactly socially acceptable nor is favored by family and loved ones. My Korean in-laws will never talk about my boxing with me nor bring it up, which means they also will never attend any of my fights. Only my father-in-law, K-Gere, offered me any kind of congratulations for my KO victory in Thailand and it was but a simple thumbs up and "congrats". Ji Hyun's mother always attends her fights, and almost always cries during it, but I wonder if perhaps she is the only family member that attends.
The fight started; the fight ended. It was a close fight but when it ended we all knew who the winner was and so did both the home and away corners. Torres' coach jumped into the ring, picked her up and swung her around. She raised her hands way up into the air, smiled huge, and leaned back as to look up and thank God. The ref then gathered the two fighters. He then raised Ji Hyun's hand, signifying that she had won, and when he did that Torres collapsed on the ring floor. She was devastated and while she sat on bent knee, her coach turned around several times and yelled in the direction of the ref and home team.
I met up with Torres after, correction I searched the entire building for her after. The short of the long story behind that was we couldn't figure out where they had situated her change room. I knocked on the door, peeked in and then entered to talk to her and her team. "Do you speak English?", I asked her. It was a simple question but she raised her shoulders in confusion and responded by asking me "Espanol?" (Do you speak Spanish?) That's how little English she spoke; she didn't even know how to say Spanish in English. My heart totally went out to her right there as if she hadn't already captured it when she lost the fight and fell to her knee in the ring. I tried to explain to her that I too was a boxer and that I live here in Korea so I know about Korea's ways but it was hard to do so. I then randomly blurted out "I'm just going to hug you" and that's exactly what I did. I leaned forward, wrapped my arms around her and hugged her. When I left the room, I turned and peeked back in. She had started to cry.
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