History Being Made in Cheonan!!!... Saturday, December 11

Cheonan hosted a boxing tournament today so I headed off to its' location with a couple of the boys from UP Boxing Club. We arrived with plenty of time, nice and early but not so nice considering it meant I had about two hours to kill in an empty gym with Snickers' former coach. Text messaging friends about wanting to kick him in the head was pretty much the only thing that stopped me from doing so. You could feel the tension... yikes.

But today wasn't about Mr. Dumb-Nut, it was about the Cheonan Bulldog and a visiting foreign female who I was eager to see fight in the ring.

The original UP Boxing Club team, for the most part, have all gone their separate ways and a new generation of teammates is starting to take over. As it stands, there's only four of us on the new team and The Cheonan Bulldog is of the new generation. It felt awesome to run into some oldies but goodies from UP though, like Gangster Oppa who greeted me with a brutal punch to the shoulder.

K-Boy Tyson showed up out of the blue and it was great to see him again. He's got to be one of my favorite boys from UP because of his child-like manner towards me. Junior Mint doesn't really like him, nor do many of the guys at UP but I think he's adorable. So what if he's a bit punch drunk, he's strange and I think that's why I like him. "Don't you miss me? I thought you forgot about me" I sarcastically told him. "Of course... don't make me cry Amy" he responded with. I haven't seen him since the last 10km race I ran in Cheonan in which he also raced in. He's stepped out of boxing but has continued on with his passion of running.

For sure a highlight of my day was running into Black Skinny who showed up with his smiley wife and his ever-so-cute son, Tae Hyun. It was nice to get to chat with him and he took me out into the halls to show me some pointers for next week's game.

And then there was the anticipated meeting with the IFBA President, Mrs. Kulis. I've met her several times prior to today but today we wanted to talk business. It was nice to see her, she's always so super sweet to me and she always hugs me just like my mom.

Ended up handing out a lot of my business cards to random people and I posed for a couple of pictures, but I had a good laugh out of two older man who approached me and asked if they could punch me in the stomach. I was a bit caught off guard by their strange request but took it as a compliment considering the conversation that followed their odd request. And no, I didn't in fact let them punch me but they did manage to get in a good pinch... hahaha.

There were only two fights I was particularly interested in watching today one of which was a foreign female boxer who had flown into Korea on Tuesday, Jennifer "The Razor" Barber. Many of my buddies from UP were crossing their fingers that she'd win but that was pretty much as far as their cheering went. Typical... just so typical, I hate that. And on that note, I hope that none of these guys come to my fight next week. I know I'm not the expected winner so I'd hate to make them feel uncomfortable by having them cheer for me.

"You're all chicken!" I told them, and with that I yelled extra loud for Jennifer.

Jennifer's opponent, Ji Hye, was an expected win but Jennifer showed up with quite the impressive technical skill and insane stamina. In the 6th round Ji Hye head-butted Jennifer and I was sure the Korean judges would use this as a cheap excuse to stop the fight. However, little did I know, Mrs. Kulis had hand picked the judges prior to the fight and had a table full of honest Korean judges scoring the fight, something that she noted later was quite a hassle but surely needed (I totally agree). So the fight continued on.

They faught ten long grueling rounds and it was such an impressive fight. You could see in about the seventh round the drive and desire drain out of Ji Hye. You could just see it in her eyes, she just didn't want it anymore, that or she thought she couldn't get the win anymore.

With Jennifer winning the fight I knew that history was being made here in little old Cheonan today. For the most part, Korea gives a massive home advantage to its' home boxers and is quite hard on visiting boxers. Jennifer had definitely beat the odds and I noted to her how proud I was to have her here in Korea fighting.

The next fight I was there for was that of the Cheonan Bulldog. He was an expected win but how he won was certainly not expected.

About two minutes into the first round he knocked out his opponent!!!

He didn't do our little front flip that we had practiced last Sunday but he did jump up and do a little cart wheel. Congrats buddy!!! Everyone from UP went out for dinner to celebrate the Cheonan Bulldog's victory but I had to skip out on account that I couldn't really join in the festive eating.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Where are all these people when you're not number one?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.
-- John F. Kennedy