Hab es zwar schon mal woanders erwähnt, aber zur Angst und Schmerzen beim Boxen hat John Scully wohl die besten Worte gefunden:
The Green Mile
"The wait in the dressing room before a Boxing match — that last hour — would be enough to strip a Man that never Boxed before of whatever Pride, Desire and Heart he THOUGHT he had."
- Iceman John Scully
April 2002
By Ron DiMichele: The fighter has something to say and he wants you to hear it. Maybe that’s why the above quote automatically accompanies every email sent out by veteran light-heavyweight Iceman John Scully.
"I’ve always wanted people to understand what we go through," says Scully. "I hate when people say, ‘I would fight Mike Tyson for a million dollars! I’d let him hit me that one time!’ When you got to that dressing room, it would be like someone telling you, ‘Look, in five minutes someone’s going to come in here and put a bullet through your head.’ That would be the equivalent of what you would go through. I tell them, ‘You wouldn’t even make it out of the dressing room, let alone the fight.’ And anybody who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves."
The Iceman has walked his talk. A top U.S. amateur at 165 lbs, John Scully of Hartford, CT has compiled a professional record of 38 -11 with 21 knockouts since turning pro in 1988. The one-time New England middleweight champion has been in with the likes of former middleweight and super middleweight belt holder Michael Nunn and fought for the IBF light heavyweight title in 1996.
"Nobody can imagine it," explains Scully. "People have fights in the streets, and these are tough guys. They say, ‘I’ve had a hundred street fights. Boxing won’t bother me.’ And I say, ‘Look, you’ve had fights in the street on the spur of the moment. And the fight lasted 20 seconds until somebody broke it up or you guys got tired. But if you had to think about it, if you had to walk to the ring…’"
Early in his career, the intensity of the pre-fight dressing room caught Scully by surprise.
"The first time it happens you say, ‘I can’t believe it. I’m scared. I’m fearful.’ You’re wondering what’s going to happen to you. It’s a test in itself."
Scully says that being a veteran fighter stands for more than what has happened in the ring.
"When people say ‘experience’… this guy’s got a lot of experience. It’s not just the fight. This guy’s been in the dressing room 35 times as opposed to your 10. He’s beat it. He’s gotten stronger because of it every time."
Early Spring sunlight shoots through the skylight windows at the San Juan Center boxing gym in downtown Hartford, CT. Both pro and amateur fighters work out, sparring, hitting the mitts with trainers and pounding the heavybags. "Being in the gym is very relaxing," says Scully. "I can box 10 rounds easy in the gym."
But once a fight is signed, there is a mental and emotional progression leading up to the bout.
"Every day it just intensifies and other things in your life become less important. It gets to the point where your whole life revolves around this one particular fight."
According to Scully, a fighter’s mental state the night before a fight can depend on his training.
"When I fought Michael Nunn, I was so focused, so sure and so ready, I slept like a baby…Drake Thadzi was probably the worst. I just couldn’t lose weight properly. I was weak. I was up all night. It was like going to the electric chair. I was like, ‘I’m going to die tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to get killed.’
The pre-fight dressing room is the final moment of truth:
"If you’re in the dressing room and you realize you skipped days of running, instead of doing 100 sit-ups a day you did 50. It all hits you at that moment. You can’t escape it."
Scully says that any honest fighter will tell you there were times he wanted to run out of there.
"Michael Grant said when he fought Lennox Lewis that he had never been more lonely in his entire life than just before that fight. Even though there were people with him in the dressing room, he’d never felt more alone."
John Scully clearly respects all fighters who have passed through the dressing room wait and made that walk out to the ring.
"People made fun of Frank Bruno," says Scully. "When he fought Mike Tyson the second time, they say he did the sign of the cross 36 times between the dressing room and the ring. Now, somebody who never fought, they’re going to say, ‘Ah, that’s a punk! He was scared!’ I’m gonna say, ‘He was scared, and he still made that walk. He had a good idea of what was going to happen, and he walked out anyway. He walked that green mile.’ "
Scully explains that emerging for the ring walk is like jumping off of a diving board. You stand up there for five minutes worrying about the cold water, but once you jump, the time for worry is over.
"It’s like, ‘I don’t wanna do it, I don’t wanna do it.’ But once you jump. It’s like, ‘It’s too late to worry. I don’t have time because I’m going to hit the water in 5 seconds.’ It’s time to put up or shut up. There’s no time to be a baby now."
Why would anyone put himself through the dressing room wringer?
"When you sit in that dressing room, a lot of times all you think about is, ‘I don’t want to fight anymore, after this fight I’m going to retire. This is crazy; I’m subjecting myself to torture, dying a thousand deaths. Man, I’m not into boxing.’ And after the fight, within 2 minutes of the fight ending, all you want to do is fight again. You can’t wait until the next fight comes."
Scully compares the fight experience to bungee jumping.
"People that bungee jump. People think they like it, that they’re like all excited when they do it. But when they’re walking up that ladder, they’re thinking the same thing. ‘Man, this thing might break. This thing might snap. I might hit my face on the concrete. I might die.’ And when they’re on the way down, they’re like, ‘Whoahhhhhhhh!’ But when it’s over, all they wanna do is do it again. It’s a thrill ride."
John Scully currently trains both professional and amateur fighters and continues with his own boxing career. He’s looking forward to a likely June match-up with Teddy Atlas-trained Elvir Muriqui. Scully deserves a mountain of credit for talking so openly about his experience in boxing. He pulls no punches in admitting his own fears and comes across as a genuine person with a truckload of heart.
"In the dressing room you realize you’re just like everybody else and you’re scared. And you realize at the end of it that you’re a little more than some other people because you go through with it anyway. That dressing room wait is no joke."
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/boxing-news/dimichele0104.php
No Picnic
“I’ve had fights where my hair hurt. My HAIR hurt!” - ‘Iceman’ John Scully
03.02.04 - By Ron DiMichele:
A great tidal shift of emotion transpires at the end of a prizefight. Two combatants, who moments before vied to knock each other unconscious, now embrace like old friends.
“I don’t know why I do it,” says John Scully. “If it was two guys in a burning building and they both made it out, they’d probably hug even though they don’t know each other.”
‘Iceman’ John Scully forged his boxing insight through 49 professional bouts and a stellar amateur boxing career. The former light-heavyweight contender offers a unique, brutally honest, and penetrating perspective into the inner workings of the sweet science. A perspective gained only by those who have dished it out, and eaten some as well.
In ‘No Picnic,’ John Scully discusses the aftermath of battle, the often hidden view of a fighter’s post-fight experience.
“You go to an amateur tournament,” says Scully. “You get an inner-city, really rough, hard-core black kid, and you get a white kid from Minnesota. Maybe they never even say ‘hi’ to each other all week. But they fight each other, and after the fight, they hug.”
The emotion doesn’t stop at the final bell. When a fight goes the distance, a tense interlude settles in while the judges tally the scorecards.
“It’s nerve-wracking,” says Scully. “A lot of times a fighter could whitewash somebody. Beat ‘em every round. And they’ll ask the trainer, ‘Do I have it?’ You can watch a guy hitting an opponent with combinations and the other guy hits him back with one shot. To the crowd, the guy throwing the combinations is killing this guy, but to the guy throwing the combinations, he gets hit back with that one shot and he’s like, ‘Oh man, he evened the score, that one hurt.’ Until they raise your hand, especially in this game, it’s nerve-wracking.”
Fighters often have a very visible reaction to losing a fight, especially a close decision. Scully points out that the fight itself is the final act in a long process, and this accounts for the fighter’s often intense response.
“People think he fought tonight, he thinks he won, and now he’s upset… You’re running every morning! Every hour, every second of every day for weeks and weeks and weeks before the fight is geared towards this fight. Cutting the lawn doesn’t matter. Doing the dishes doesn’t matter. When it’s over, and you’re feeling all those emotions and guys are acting a certain way, they’re acting mad, you know, it’s not just that fight. They’ve been stressed out over this for weeks and weeks and weeks. This is a culmination.”
Coming out on the short end of a decision impacts a fighter more deeply than just the loss of an athletic contest.
“It’s a personal thing” says Scully. “With me, and I think with a lot of fighters, it’s like, you know, you lost to another MAN. He’s a better MAN than you. You know, he can CREAM you, he’s STRONGER than you, your kids will like him more than they like you. That type of thing. And so yeah, you don’t wanna lose. And it gets hard to deal with sometimes.”
Winning, as one might imagine, is the flip side of the coin.
“Absolute elation,” says the Iceman. “Unbelievable.”
Ironically, Scully says that one of his most satisfying fights was a loss.
“When I fought Nunn [former middleweight and super middleweight belt holder, Michael Nunn], I didn’t win the fight, but that was one of the best times I had after a fight. I fought a good fight and a lot of people thought I won. All night I was on a cloud. Because of who he was I proved I belonged, even though I didn’t win it.”
In the wake of a crushing defeat, there may be little to uplift a fighter’s spirit, but in commenting on last year’s fight between Providence, RI lightweight, Gary Balletto, and Mexico’s Goyo Vargas, Scully says losing doesn’t always mean defeat.
“I don’t know what type of mentality he [Gary Balletto] has, but even though he took that kind of beating, he should have felt good in the sense of he showed something. He showed he’s a warrior. A lot of guys better than him can’t say they’re warriors. There are a lot of guys that would have quit in his case. He didn’t do that, so he should have felt good about himself.”
The physical toll of a prizefight is often not apparent immediately following the contest.
“[Right after the fight] you look like a beauty queen compared to what you look like the next day,” says Scully.
Scully relates his own experience with post-fight disfigurement.
“These cuts? When I fought Tony Thornton, I had been cut previously in the Tim Littles fight. In the Thornton fight, they all opened up and it was bad. When I got up the next morning, it was grotesque. My eyes were so swollen…[they] were glued together from some kind of fluid. It was so swollen my finger wouldn’t go in. I literally had to dig my way through with a pen just so I could see myself in the mirror. Yeah, that was no picnic.”
In the intensity of battle, the fighter will not realize the extent of the punishment.
“I fought a guy named Art Bayless,” relates Scully. “He was a big puncher. He had knocked out Drake Thadzi brutally. A real ugly knockout. I ended up beating him, but I noticed during the fight he kept hitting me with little body shots. Every time I got inside he was digging little uppercuts to the body. And I remember saying to myself, ‘Man, this dude, he can’t punch at all. I thought he was a big puncher but these punches aren’t hurting.’ In the fight they really didn’t bother me. After the fight, I went downstairs, did interviews, whatever, took a shower. Came upstairs and we went to the restaurant at Foxwoods. I was sitting at the table and I couldn’t bend over to get my food. My stomach was so knotted up from the body shots. I couldn’t bend over I was in such pain.
Ask Micky Ward what he felt like after he fought Gatti. You have injuries and pain in places you didn’t even know was possible. I heard this when I was a kid and I thought it was an exaggeration, but I’ve had fights where my hair hurt. My HAIR hurt.”
Is it an adjustment to go back to everyday life after a prizefight?
“You don’t feel like you should have to,” says John Scully. “When you’re in a fight you’re feeling special. Especially when you’re on TV, you’re a special guy. And to go back to being a regular guy when you’ve just been in training camp for weeks and you’ve been focused. You need a couple of days to settle back into it. That next day you don’t want to do anything. It’s almost like coming back from war. With me, I wanna go see people. You know, friends, ‘Hey, what’s up? I’m back! I’m back from war! I’m here!’ That type of thing.”
To the surprise and chagrin of us all, these modern gladiators often continue fighting when they clearly should have hung up the gloves and left the glaring lights and roaring crowds behind.
“Oh man, you can’t get away from it,” says Scully. “When you hear about a guy, say Sugar Ray Leonard, who kept coming back. People say, Doesn’t he have enough money?’ He could give that money away and not know it’s gone. I said this before and it’s true, I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m training for a fight. Never, never never.”
I want to thank John Scully for participating in a series of interviews which has resulted in the trilogy of articles ‘Boxing’s Green Mile,’ ‘The Danger Game,’ and now, ‘No Picnic.’ Interviewing John has been not only a pleasure, but an enlightening journey through the entire fight process from one who has been there. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I.
The sport of boxing takes plenty of knocks, but anyone who has been around boxing enough recognizes it as a close fraternity of remarkable people. John Scully is one of those remarkable people.
“Before a fight a guy’s friends might say, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, my boy’s going to knock you out,” explains John, “And after the fight they might still say that, but the fighter’s going to say, ‘No, relax, the guy’s all right.’ Which I think is one of the absolute greatest things about boxing.”
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=556&more=1 
