Some Notes on Being Hit by Smaller Men

This is my morning routine, which suggests either discipline or a failure of imagination: I walk my dog half-asleep at five, run in a state of permanent grouchiness at five-thirty, and force myself to box at six with a rugged, smirking, forty-five-year-old welterweight named Oscar—who, as of November fifteenth, two-thousand-twenty-five, still fights and wins amateur bouts.

His opponents are often heavier. Sometimes embarrassingly so. He hasn’t lost in years, if testimony is to be believed. His official record is a mystery, but I’m convinced he’s fought his entire life under the nickname “Snoopy.”

He certainly doesn’t look like Snoopy.If Snoopy boxed, Charlie Brown would be dead.

It would be easier for gravity to stop pulling than for Oscar to take a day off. When he’s not teaching mortals the sweet science, he trains daily with the boxing team of a Mexican university. I don’t think it ever crosses his mind whether repeated blows to the head are a good idea. Pain, in his world, is not a warning—it’s feedback. He hands out his fists unsparingly. I’ve seen him fight once at a makeshift market, in conditions that made me fear for my own safety. Snoopy won by knockout.

In the words of my friend Raúl: ta cabrón.

I’m happy to report that he has yet to slur his speech—though he occasionally makes jokes that don’t make sense.

“I don’t get headaches,” he tells me when I ask about migraines after sparring.

I believe him. I also believe he would continue boxing during the apocalypse, if only to feel normal again.

He was born with Cleto gloves and a disposition suggesting life itself wronged him early. Stoic to the core. Never surrendering. Total command of body and mind. His students suffer most because we mistake him for an answer.

For better or worse—mostly worse, if you ask about my energy levels—I’ve followed Snoopy’s school of boxing for four years. My limbs and mind beg for the torture to stop. But I’m addicted. I crave the pain. This should concern me. I should probably talk to my therapist about why being yelled at while exhausted feels stabilizing. I could take a pottery class instead. Pottery people seem calmer. Their biggest fear is a lopsided bowl, not brain damage.

Oscar’s expectations weigh heavier on me than waking at five to pick up dog excrement. I’ve learned not to question his commands and to obey the brutal arithmetic of boxing, which is refreshingly honest in a way most belief systems are not:

Squats and crunches equal leg and gut pain. Jumps and push-ups equal shoulder and knuckle pain. Running equals leg pain.Heavy bag equals aching shoulders and hands. Punch shields equal forearm pain. Friday sparring equals excruciating body pain and mental exhaustion. Rest on weekends—and we’re back to square one.

It never ends. Which is part of the appeal. If the suffering is predictable, at least I know where I stand. The upside is that I can eat buckets of food without shame. But the real prize is pride: suffering through it for weeks and months.

Suffering—let that stick.

His philosophy boils down to discipline under duress. Loving pain is the name of the game.

“Boxing is demanding,” he says.

Yeah. No shit.

I never feel like I’m where I should be, but I’m certain he believes we’re war machines. I’m thirty-six and I’ve fought twice in the ring—just enough to be dangerous to my own judgment. Neither experience resembled Snoopy’s world. They were controlled, amateur affairs, full of referees, headgear, and people whose livelihoods did not depend on violence. I didn’t embarrass myself. I survived. I even looked competent.

This, unfortunately, gave me confidence.

I’ve told Oscar repeatedly that I’m afraid of concussions, as any thinking person should be. Still, Snoopy asks if I’ll be dancing again soon. I shake my head in embarrassment. He shakes his in dismay. We sit in silence, each disappointed in the other for entirely different reasons.

I’m sure he’ll ask again next year.I’m equally sure I’ll consider it for half a second longer than I should.

Here lies the dilemma: Snoopy trains a group of adrenaline junkies like we’re headed for a championship, though none of us ever will. And while I have been in the ring before, my last attempt at sparring him ended ass on the ground. The guy isn’t even a professional, and he can seriously fuck you up.

Furious, I accused him of not knowing better than to counter me with a straight right—disparity of ability and all. I lost a piece of my soul that day.

Here’s how the epic went.

I was three kilos overweight from the holidays, gargantuan amounts of food to blame. His nimble frame showed through his shirt—shredded, wiry, tough. Like the Russian and Irish boxers of old. His humility and size paled next to my middleweight monstrosity, or so I rationalized. I’m five-eleven; he’s a puny five-seven. I weighed seventy-four  kilos to his sixty-seven—seven kilos heavier.

Strength and size always win, right? Right?

We stepped into the imaginary ring and spent the first half of the round testing each other—jabs to measure distance, hips moving, footwork, dancing. I landed a jab to the body and it hurt, like touching a hot stove. He landed one and I felt like I’d been hit by a rocket launcher.

I threw; he blocked. He threw; I blocked.

A stiff jab crashed into my forearm, the shockwave snapping my head back. The man doesn’t have fists—he has hammers, man. The round ended. I felt like I’d run a marathon, but hope remained.

Second round: more of the same, until he landed a left hook that sent me back to the Stone Age. Panic set in as my punches found nothing but air. I pressed on, with some success to the body. None to the head. The fox evaded everything. Meanwhile, I moved like a turtle carrying a fridge.

Third round. I felt like I’d run two marathons. Near death, I devised a solution: a Hail Mary. I jabbed and jabbed, hiding the bomb. Then I threw everything—legs, back, soul—into a cross.

I woke up face-down on the floor.

What the fuck?

He countered me with a right of his own. Physics is cruel: the fox will always beat the turtle hauling a refrigerator. It wasn’t the fall that hurt—it was realizing my self-image had died mid-air, without even asking for my opinion.

As I lay there reminiscing about happier times—times when I didn’t sign up for shit like this—I realized I never stood a chance. Snoopy looked like he’d taken a stroll around the block. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. A sardonic smirk rested on his face. It took him a fraction of a second to obliterate me.

I saw red. I couldn’t finish the round. I couldn’t stand up. The gap between us revealed itself all at once, and I understood that if I rose, I’d be knocked down again. I chose not to participate in that learning experience.

How the fuck did he do it?

“He’s a boxer. You’re not,” my buddy Mau reasoned.“He won before the imaginary bell rang. He never takes a day off. He’s a master,” Mau laughed.

A psychodrama for the ages.

I took solace in one thing: I’d knocked Mau out once with a body shot. I wore the smirk that day. Levels, man.

While I experienced ego death, my brothers-in-arms shrugged it off. One said it was a terrible idea to spar an experienced boxer who takes things too seriously.

“He’s a boxer."“And he takes it too seriously,” Rubén texted.

I felt stupid. But I wanted to tango. To be the people’s champ. To meet Snoopy at his level, to earn his approval—the way the kid wants to impress the psychopathic jazz teacher in that movie. Something like that.

I swore I’d never forgive Snoopy for the humiliation. Swore I’d never return to his torture chamber.

But I did.

It took a lot of digging to admit the truth: getting my ass kicked was a humbling experience I could have lived without.

I still wake up at five. I still run. I still box. I still believe—despite overwhelming evidence—that next time might be different.

After all, I’d been in the ring twice.

Which, in my mind, qualified me as “experienced,” the way owning a ladder qualifies you as a roofer.

By Fernando J. Villalovs