I'm not going to write about the fights I saw today because, like my high school teacher once told me, if you're not a part of the solution than you're a part of the problem and I don't quite know how to be part of the solution. There is a problem with Korea's boxing and I know it's not exclusive to only Korea, I know first hand that it's also in Japan and Thailand too, but today's match-ups reached well beyond just Asia. It's as discouraging and patience-pulling as it is embarassing and annoying. It's what makes me question if I want to even stay in the game. There are way too many dirty politics in boxing for it to ever be considered just a sport.
Instead of the fights, I'm going to just write about the things I enjoyed today, like running into many of my fellow Korean boxers who always greet me with hugs and smiles. Koreans don't really hug when they greet people but I think maybe they think that's how foreigners greet and with me being a foreigner, well, that's how they greet me. I find it super funny though because when I greet many of my friends in Toronto we exchange kisses on the cheeks. It was only when I came to Korea that people started hugging me in excess whenever they greeted me. Perhaps this is an American thing because almost all of my American friends here hug me when they say hi. But anyways, enough about all this "hug talk".
It was great to show my support to Danbi with her fight today and I snuck into her changeroom before her fight. Later on, right before her fight, she came out and stood beside me as we watched one of our fellow boxing club's boxers fight. Danbi has always been really supportive of me fighting and when I had my fight in Thailand she was the first one to call and ask me how my fight went. I should note here that at the boxing club where I was training in Thailand they had a fight poster up of one of Danbi's previous fights so that was pretty cool.
Korea's female boxing pool of active fighters is pretty small in comparision to that of Canada's and America's, where the sport and their fighters are treated much differently. I like it in that this means we're a tight crew of female fighters who pretty much all know each other or at least know a lot about each other. The one main problem this poses however is that this means we have to fight each other. Your opponent is never just some random girl training at some club you've never heard about but is instead the friend you sat by at the live fights or the one your fellow female boxer introduced you to on Facebook.
I'm registered as a flyweight (50kgs) but have been fighting below my weight class with minimum weight (47kgs), two weight classes below mine, being the lightest I've fought at. Under the flyweight class, there are three other weight classes and I know all the current Korean champions of those classes, including the current flyweight champion and the champions in a few weight classes above flyweight. For now those friends of mine are my inspiration and are at a status I would love to reach, but to one day get there and say step into the ring to have to fight a friend, a Korean friend, wow that's rough. The struggle is real.
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