Tom Schreck - TKO

“You sure it’s not the weight from the tanks?” Jerry Number Two said.

It was a little early for me to sit and pound a few Schlitzes, so I bid the guys a quick early afternoon farewell and walked Al home. Just as Jamal promised, he was remarkably more subdued. Maybe it was the tracking or maybe it was simply the exertion, but it didn’t matter to me. If it would mellow Al out, I’d take him for synchronized swimming lessons-with or without the tanks.

When we got back to the Blue there was a message from Smitty. Apparently, Jerry Perryman’s license had been suspended and they had to get me a new opponent. The new guy was named Rufus Strife from Oklahoma and his record was even worse than Perryman’s. Like me, Strife was a short-notice guy who would get paid more than Perryman because he was taking the fight on even shorter notice. None of it mattered to me; I knew the guy was coming in to be a stiff.

For the first time in my professional boxing career, I was excited about possibilities. Don’t get me wrong, I loved to fight and I got off on the thrill of it, but I never really allowed myself to believe that it was going someplace. This new opportunity wasn’t necessarily for a starring role in the game, but it meant being someone rather than just an opponent.

It’s a weird business. I felt like I stepped on the right Monopoly square, and I have to admit I liked what was happening. I’ve always played the guy who was being sent in for cannon fodder, and now they were finding me a setup. I didn’t feel bad over that-Strife would get his paycheck and go home just like I’ve done lots of times.

I couldn’t remember being in better shape. I wasn’t fooling myself, I knew the NABU was not a real championship, but even marginal titles meant more fights, more TV, and more money. I had been a pro for eight years and getting to wear a championship belt, even a goofy one, was a big deal to me.

The promoter loved the response I got at the Garden from the Irish. In boxing you can become a folk hero if a nationality gets behind you. He was talking about plans for Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston, and even Belfast or Warsaw down the road, maybe not as a headliner but as a co-feature or added attraction that would get the crowd going. It sure beat fighting in front of disinterested crowds who had no idea who you were and cared even less. Irish and Polish fans came out for their countrymen because of their nationalistic pride and because of the fact that the beer was pretty cheap at the fights. That was cool with me.

So it was pretty clear: win this fifth fight and get a chance to fight for a belt. Win the belt and every fight means a bit more money. The fight with Strife at the fair was going to be broadcast on the Gotham Cable Network, which featured weekly TV fights that weren’t what you’d call “world class.” Honestly, a fight card where Duffy Dombrowski is the feature attraction is not exactly world class-not yet anyway.

Fight night came and I was walking on clouds. There were several thousand fans from the area and for the first time ever, Crawford was seeing me as their guy. It felt a little weird but I loved it and it charged me up. I got to the fair a couple of hours before my bout during one of the early prelims and found our makeshift dressing rooms were in the cinder-block building in the center of the fairgrounds.

Smitty wrapped my hands in his usual deliberate fashion, all the while reciting his mantra of fundamentals. They were the same pre-fight things he’s said for the last fourteen years to me and to everyone else he’s trained. It’s not that he’s not creative or doesn’t know the game inside and out-he definitely does. He believes down to his bones that boxing is a matter of doing the right things over and over, every training session, every round and every fight. He, of course, was right.

Strife had the dressing room right next to mine and, unlike a lot of fighters before fights, he was quiet. I saw him briefly at the weigh-in and the pre-fight physicals, and let’s just say, he was less than imposing. Simply put, he was fat, slow moving, and he looked disinterested. These weren’t the characteristics of a champion, which was okay by me. If ol’ Rufus wanted to get a payday and go home, that was going to be just fine.

While the preliminaries were going on on the Gotham Network, announcers came into my dressing room to get some comments they could air during our introductions. It was the usual TV shit-actually, who am I kidding? I’ve been on TV a couple of times but never as a feature fighter, so this was hardly usual for me. What was usual were the idiotic questions about my strategy, what the fight meant, et cetera, et cetera. My strategy was to hit the other guy more than he hit me, and the fight meant a chance to make some cash. Of course I didn’t say that, but that was the real deal. The commentator was a guy named Bobby Briggs who had held the middleweight title for a month or so in the ’70s. He was a fighter and a decent guy.

“Duffy, can you tell us what this fight means to you?” Briggs asked.

“It means a chance at a belt but more importantly it means a chance to show my hometown who I am and what I can do,” I said.

“Do you have a game plan to handle Strife?”

“Well, he won’t have to find me-I plan to be right in front of him, pressing the action.”

“Thanks, Duffy. Good luck.” Briggs finished up with me and spoke with the camera guys about some technical stuff before moving on. They left me and I presumed they went over to talk to Rufus, who was still silent in his room. He didn’t even bring a cornerman, instead he was going to use a local guy and pay him fifty bucks from his purse. That wasn’t unheard of, but it was pretty sad even by boxing standards.

Smitty started to have me loosen up with some pad work. Before fights he spent most of the time drilling the recoil again and again to burn it into my mind even more just before I went in the ring. The goal was to get me to break a light sweat before I went in the ring and it was a good strategy. Guys who went in cold and dry often got caught with a punch they weren’t expecting.

Smitty had me take a break and I heard Briggs outside the door arguing with some producer type wearing a head set.

“I don’t care what you say,” Briggs said. “It ain’t right and I ain’t using it.”

“C’mon, Bobby it makes great stuff,” Headset said.

“The fuckin’ guy’s mom dies two days ago and he takes the fight for funeral expenses and you think that’s cool? Fuck you.” Briggs said.

The headset guy walked away with his arms up in the air for maximum dramatic effect. I walked over to Briggs against Smitty’s protest.

“Kid, get your head where it belongs,” Smitty said.

“Hang on,” I said.

I walked up the hallway to find Briggs. I called to him to slow down.

“Hey, Bobby,” I said.

“Yeah, Duff?”

“That shit about Strife’s mom-is that true?”

“Kid,” Briggs said. “It’s not your concern. Go warm up,” he said.

“But-”

“Look, Duff, I got to get to the ring.”

He walked away and I stood there, not sure what to think. I turned just in time for Strife to leave his dressing room to make his ring walk. Handwritten on his terrycloth robe was “For Momma.”

Smitty scolded me back to the dressing room and told me to get my head into the fight. I tried and got ready to walk out to the ring. I felt sick to my stomach, but it wasn’t the usual pre-fight jitters-this was different. I walked out to the strains of Elvis’s opening, the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, and tried to get ready. The crowd cheered my entrance and I heard them, but it was like I was removed from it at the same time. Something wasn’t right.