I had been at the site of the Ward/Kessler rumble for only a few minutes when my eyes caught the shape of something slowly coming towards me. It looked a little like a van and had a red stripe on its side and another one around its edges. There was some lettering above the red stripe…AMR. The MR was in blue while the A was in red.
The shape pulled in near one of the entrances to the arena and stopped.
I could see an elbow resting on the open window and the silhouette of a person. The faint smell of cigarette smoke floated around me.
The shape was an ambulance and its entrance jarred me for a moment. I took in some air and scanned the clouds above and noted the thickness and…darkness, not stormy but defiantly threatening. The humming sound of the nearby freeway filled my ears as other cars slowly pulled into the parking lot. The dark clouds were closer now. I wondered if this was some kind of a sign, the ambulance and the dark clouds – in its history boxing has certainly had its share of tragedies. I shook my head and silently mouthed an inaudible ‘no’….
I had interviewed one of the boxers and read quite a bit about the other. Andre Ward is so nice that I found myself wondering how he ‘flips the switch’ to fight. He’s an intelligent and soft spoken young man who seems almost gentle…until a particular question would engage him and then those eyes would flash and ooze a determination and intensity. They were talking those eyes…
“I will not be denied,” they said…“don’t mess with me.”
The day before I had been at the weigh-in and observed Mikkel Kessler. He was constantly surrounded by his friends but there was no ego or grandstanding on his part. He smiled at most everybody even his opponent who I noted was not smiling. Kessler didn’t act like a guy who thought he was special. Quite the contrary, but his confidence in his abilities was obvious. I would call it supremely confident. And why not, he came into the fight with a gaudy record of 42 wins and 1 loss. His opponent had a total of 20 fights, gold medal or not. I got the feeling he sensed an easy payday. Fight a few rounds and then back the kid into the ropes and nail him with his right. Easy as pie, like a walk in the park. His people looked more confident then him. I shook my head and wondered, I had picked Ward to win…
As I walked into the arena the boxing ring stood out a like a gigantic cross inside a cathedral. A huge light from above shinned down on the “cross” illuminating it. The arena was still pretty empty. A few of the arena staff were standing around talking. I stood and shot the bull with a security guard. He seemed more interested in how many pretty girls might show up. I shrugged; the girls were more a sideshow at these events. Some of them are so obvious in their attempts to be noticed that it’s laughable. He wasn’t laughing, no…he was hoping…
Minute by minute the main event grew closer, I found myself watching some of the media and the fight fans. Kessler is Danish so it was easy to spot his fans, and for that matter the media that had followed him from Denmark. They were all together, typing away on their laptops or chatting with each other. They grinned a lot and barely paid any attention to the preliminary fights, but neither did the American media. It was the main event they were waiting for and the rest of it was just killing time…
As I stood there listening to the National Anthem of first Denmark and the United States my mind wandered back to my interview with Andre Ward. I had met him at Kings Gym in Oakland, probably no more than five miles from the arena. What a difference, there we sat on an old stool surrounded by pictures of great fighters and their exploits and talked for almost forty five minutes. He was ready to go then and – I believed him. Now it’s three weeks later and he’s about to take on the toughest opponent of his career. Most boxing experts picked him to lose. I think back to what he said, how he thrives on being underestimated. A few minutes later both fighters are in the ring. The buzz of anticipation is growing as the crowd impatiently waits for the opening bell. I look over at Mikkel Kessler, stretching and moving and bouncing. He’s not smiling anymore. He stares at Ward, who looks more serious, those eyes locked on Kessler, his focus obvious. There’s delay, I flash on the ambulance I saw earlier…no…no, I say to myself. ‘It’ didn’t mean anything. The crowd noise rumbles and grows until the bell finally rings and the two fighters meet in the center of the ring…
The fight itself was a beat down. Immediately anyone with eyes could see that Ward was too fast for Kessler and too sharp. He was also too clever, slipping and sliding and moving - seeming to know exactly what Kessler was going to do even before he did. And then Ward would pounce like a cobra, striking at Kessler from all angles and leaving the champion punished and shell shocked. He wasn’t the only one; the European media was stunned more than Kessler. Perplexed is the word that comes to mind, I caught them glance at each other a couple of times as if they had stumbled into some elaborate April fools joke. Problem was it’s not April and Andre Ward wasn’t fooling…
After the fight was over, and most of the crowd had dispersed I sat in my seat no more than thirty feet from the ring and soaked it all in. The Arena was mostly quiet now, and some of the staff was already disassembling the ring. I watched transfixed, only a few minutes before the place had been rocking, the roar of the crowd reverberating all around. Mikkel Kessler had left pretty quickly his face bruised and cut, his pride no doubt deflated. He was no longer the confident champion I had seen at the weigh-in. Now he seemed smaller as if he shrunk. He had run into a tornado of movement and violence, lashing out at him from places he wasn’t accustomed too.
And as for that tornado, he had his young son on his shoulders and a smile as wide as the arena.
