Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

The one the only.

That kind of stuff.

Extremely sentimental and positive statements from people that knew me and/or loved my fights.

No attention paid to my many failures.

No attention paid to the parts of me that are left behind.

He was, past tense, the greatest.

He was, past tense, Willem Floures.

In passing the name is rendered a past remembrance.

That’s what I want and I know that it’s impossible.

Willem Floures will live on.

SORRY

My mind tends to wander.

Right before a fight, I have to let my mind wander if I don’t want to psych myself; if I focus on the fight for too long, I forget why I’m fighting.

I forget who I am.

And that already happens way too much.

So I preach the silence that comes with the territory of being scatterbrained. I intentionally lose myself in thought, sitting alone for long durations, staring off into space.

I am not here.

I can’t be.

Not tonight.

Save it for the ring.

Tell myself:

Shh.

YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

True sign of a manic mind: Moments before I’m confident and self-assured, only to pick up where we left off: doubt.

WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?

It’s those cursory signals, hearing the click and the boom of the arena lighting up with anticipation, that equally manic sense of anticipation:

Electricity.

I shadowbox to do something, to fill the time, to get my heart rate up in the fifteen minutes, half hour before the fight. Really though, my mind is floating, my gaze nowhere near the glow of a focused fighter. I might as well be sitting down next to Spencer, next to the few paid-for crewmembers, including an extremely expensive cutman, because as Spencer said:

“Your skin tears like paper. Last thing we want is having the fight stolen from us via TKO.”

Really, I watch myself shadowbox, voyeur to my own actions.

The locker room is silent; brooding out from underneath the silence is the impending laughter and cheer of the audience.

Hear it.

Feel it.

Nothing.

I wish that were true.

I settle on the one-two jab followed by a right or left hook.

JAB

JAB

HOOK

There it is: My strategy.

Other than clinching, I don’t have much else except the buildup of psychological residue that I know isn’t working on someone like Executioner. It wouldn’t have worked on me back when I was his age.

We can hear the ground shaking from the audience erupting in applause as the previous fight seemingly ends.

“Turn on the TV,” I tell one of the crewmembers.

“No,” Spencer shakes his head.

STAY FOCUSED

I want to see who won. ‘King Crown’ Willem Floures or ‘Gallows’ Willem Floures? It should have been a close fight. At that age, I would have been desperate for the KO. Anything to gain some regard. We’re all the same except that somewhere during their first fifteen fights, their career took a wrong turn. Instead of climbing the league ladder, they stopped climbing.

They became journeymen.

Gatekeepers.

Basic examples of who I am, plus or minus a few addictions.

I always had an addictive personality. It comes with the territory of being Willem Floures. In Gallows’s case, he got into painkillers. He got in them bad, real bad. I know the feeling of being pulled into the nonspace of relaxation and half-thought. In that space, there is no such thing as poor thought. Nothing fazes you. It feels about as real as you want it to feel; everything else floats by as something fake, nonessential.

I’d love to float on by without any rhyme or reason for holding onto the professional identity I’ve fixated on for decades.

But I can’t.

Like the act of fighting, I am always inundated by the bothersome consequences.

I MIGHT LOSE

There’s a large possibility that I’ll lose.

And as we get word that it’s time, someone with a headset knocking on the locker room door at the same time Spencer receives a call from one of the event producers, they give us word:

“Two minutes until you begin the walk.”

Spencer nods.

The producer holds up two fingers, “Two!”

Leaves without looking me in the eye.

THE WALK

It sounds exactly like what it is:

The locker rooms are usually recessed deep within the arena, far enough away from the action to provide enough solace from the energies that often ruin your mood, spoiling your entire fight strategy, but as a result, you have that longest walk to the ring. It’s a walk that usually centers a well-trained fighter and derails the fighters that are not ready for this.

This.

Spencer with the expected:

READY?

A question with no real answer.

A slight sweat generated from shadowboxing, not quite out of breath but not quite fresh either, I stand in place, shifting my weight from left to right while Spencer checks my gloves, the lacing tight enough, covers me with my signature “Sugar Gold” robe.

I hide under the hood of the robe and as I take the first steps, initiating the long walk to the ring, I stare not ahead but at the ground.

Turning the corner, they wait for me. They wait for me wherever they can get the clearest shot. Flicker, within frame:

The media takes pictures, captures footage, tagging it all not in expectation of the future victor but rather as the man walking the long walk to his execution and his opponent the sworn Executioner.

Gaze to the ground.

I walk, separating sense from self.

In a dozen steps, I watch from behind, the steady rhythm of the walk culminated with the pressure of twelve rounds ready to end my career.

Fight. Stand up and fight.

Fight all of these negative thoughts.

There’s more to the fight than the minutes, the hour, in the ring. The fight began the moment the first picture was taken of me in relation to the rematch. The fight has been ongoing and I won a round while losing three.

I won via lying about murder.

I won via the staging of a shattered cinderblock.

But together, I have lost more rounds than I’ve won simply due to the inability to control the measure of my thoughts.

If I lose, it’s because I can’t get outside of myself.

If only I could watch from where I linger, right at this moment, the rhythm affording the ability to watch from afar, my slumped over shoulders already projecting defeat.

If only this level of focus could be maintained.

IT CAN

But will I?

Again, I battle doubt and guilt and something else.

“Something else” is reserved for all that I cannot even begin to explain. You probably see it better than I do.

What do you see?

Oh, wait:

Don’t talk to me.

I turn the last corner, the long walk growing shorter.

I can hear my entrance music.

As always it’s generic death metal. Predictable but that’s what ‘Sugar’ walks out to and that’s how it’ll end.

IF THIS IS MY LAST FIGHT

I watch as I stretch my back, throw a few punches, hopping in place as I stop momentarily at the curtain.

I crack my neck.

Center, find your center…

It is now or never.

WASHED WHITE

Light.

All I see as I push through the curtain out towards the ring.

And I walk.

The longest walk of all.

The one to the ring.

NOISE

The audience is a mixture of cheers and leers, curiosity and hatred for this old fighter, a fighter that will do anything to win. And they know it. Believe me they know it. The audience is smarter than you think. Question is, do they know that I deal in lies? Do they know what it takes to stay in the bright light?