Jimmy Takes On Golden Gloves

I love boxing. I always have for some reason. When I was little, I honestly wanted to be Rocky more than anything and I love those movies so much (except the fifth, booo). There's a scene in Rocky IV where he's training and he runs in the snow, throws logs, does abs hanging upside down...all things that I convinced myself I could and would do one day, ha!

My choice last year to hire the amazing boxer, Jimmy Clarke, as my personal trainer has been one of my best decisions, ever. He's totally driven and motivating and he crushes me weekly. The best part is I get to live out my boxing dream every Monday night, heehee. I'm definitely an aggressive person when it comes to working out so boxing has been an amazing fit for me. The addition of it to my workout routine has helped increase endurance and stamina for me like you wouldn't believe. Jimmy just knows what he's doing and he's freaking good at it. It sounds kinda sick but I also get a sort of odd satisfaction when my knuckles get busted up. It's like my battle scars or something. :P

I've been super excited for him this past month because he's been fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament and doing awesome. He won every fight leading up to the finals which took place last night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. I have a bunch of friends that train with Jimmy too so a big group of us decided to get tickets and go support him. I've never been to a live fight so I was totally psyched up for it!

We met at Tempest Bar for a few beers beforehand which is where Camille proceeded to pull out her special surprise of the night - Jimmy heads on a stick. I almost peed my pants because there were nearly 20 of us going and she'd made enough for everyone to wave around. When we got settled in our seats, I couldn't wait to take a picture:

Hahahaha! Holy crap, were they funny. We definitely went crazy screaming for him though and I think everyone around us loved Jimmy as much as we do. With Golden Gloves, the fighters are only allotted three rounds so the fight itself was really quick. It was so great watching Jimmy do his thing:

Unfortunately, Jimmy lost the fight and it seemed really unfair. Scott sent around an article about it this morning with this blurb:

In the following fight, the crowd saw a standing-eight count in one round, then a fighter fall almost entirely out of the ring in the next.

James Clarke landed a right hook to Joseph Scalafani in the middle of the second round that sent him into the standing-eight in the 165-pound novice class.

As he stood waiting for the bout to resume, Scalafani became even more determined to win."I just said to myself I'm not losing these gloves," Scalafani said. "I worked too hard the last four months to come up short."

Scalafani landed a flurry of punches right after the eight count and continued his momentum into the third. Toward the end of the third round, the two became tangled up in the corner and Clarke refused to let go of Scalafani. Scalafani pushed his opponent off and Clarke fell into the ropes, sliding through and almost falling fully out of the ring.

The referee penalized Clarke for holding and minutes later, Scalafani was announced the winner by a 3-2 decision.

We all felt so sad for Jimmy. He'd worked so hard and it was tough seeing him lose. We took him out for a beer after to console him:

Hahahaha! I'll always giggle about this. It was an awesome evening overall and a true pleasure going to support our boy. You're a winner to all of us, Jimmy!