Killah Instinct

Con Con says she thinks she has all the necessary footage to make a soap opera episode of the weekend. The story has it all: friend vs. friend, romance, tears, broken bones, doubt, starvation, rival schools, victory and friendship.

There was a last minute shuffle of the entourage, Joe Joe had to bail cuz he got a big money job for Target and Caroline’s brother also had to opt out, so Caroline came in Joe’s place. With her addition, Team Killah comprised Con, Kate, and Lisa. They showed up early at my house on Friday, where I was suddenly 4.5 lbs overweight? In my sleep I must have breathed in some fat air or something.

Anyway it was war on my weight: fasting and wearing the sauna suit with jump rope breaks at the rest stops on the way. Kate brought a tailor-made Boxing Mix for the ride and we set out. Half way through the trip I weighed in at 139.6 -Exactly 1 lb off of weight.

8 hours later we finally arrive at the Worst Western. I try to weigh myself one last time only to have the machine crap out on me, at this point I can only hope I’m at weight.

There’s a long ass line for weigh in. I’m excited, can’t help but look at all the girls trying to size up possible opponents. Finally I’m in -strip off my clothes, eagerly step on the scales, and the guy says, “Hold up, slow down, you got on too soon, that’s bad luck.” I do not need to hear about bad luck. I weigh in at exactly 137.

The entourage is by the pool, in full Killah regalia. I’m hyper, delirious and eating like it’s my job. We pile in the car, dolled up, and head to some trendy neighbourhood in Richmond. We end up at a fantastic restaurant, I eat more food than I have in weeks, then promptly crash and burn.

Saturday morning, I dress in my lucky pink shorts, my pure, clean, brand new white sport bra, throw on the 5 Points sweatshirt –gotta represent- and head down for breakfast. I feel utterly centered. I have visualised every step of the process, and everything feels good and manageable, I’m not nervous, I feel ready for anything. Anytime I get a rush of nerves I summon up my Ice Cave –which for me, strangely, is the song Blinded By The Light. I change the lyrics slightly in my head, “She got down but she never got up.” That’s what I intend to inflict on my opponent.

I find out my first fight is against my classmate Macro Deb. I can’t believe it; we thought this wouldn’t be allowed. There’s no way around it, we can’t change weight classes and there simply aren’t enough of us in the 138.6 class -Just four girls, 3 of whom are 5 Points. This sort of sucks.

We head over to the Showplace. It’s grubby and quite empty, even though there are 3 rings set up and a lot of schools from all over the country.

My teammates are an exceptional bunch, all with interesting stories, all with different reasons for doing what we’re doing, and all totally ready and enthusiastic and supportive. Most of us were a bit clueless: when do we start warming up? When do I suit up? That sort of stuff. I can’t help wondering if I’ve adequately rehydrated and refueled and I keep peeing every 7 minutes. It’s pretty chaotic, things are starting very late, no one knows what’s going on and we’re all trying really hard to keep our nerves subdued.

I still don’t know who the other girl in our weight class is, so I keep sizing them up, some are huge, some are tiny, they all have cornrows.

I go to watch Tal fight. He steps in the ring and is clearly way more in shape than his opponent. The bell goes off and he’s just a flurry of punches, stepping forward as he round houses to the head, first left then right -the guy’s not blocking. He knocks the guy to the ground in the first 30 seconds. From then on the guy is renamed Spaghetti Legs. Tal just keeps throwing and by the 3rd round is just chasing Spaghetti all over the ring. Needless to say, it was a unanimous victory. YEY! Excellent start.

Macro Deb and I are politely avoiding one another. There’s no malice, but it seems like we have to start separating ourselves from each other and our allegiance. I ask myself whether I should fight this regularly, or tone it down. I realise that I have to treat this like any other fight. It’s the only thing to do, friend or not.

Since there’s a conflict of interest, our Krus can’t corner for us, so Tal is appointed as my corner man and Micro Deb works for Macro Deb.

Walking up the steps to the ring, my heart rate rises, the second I step into the ring, the nerves subside, my focus is acute, I can’t help but stare right at Deb.

I find myself throwing a lot of knees, getting her in clinch and just throwing left then right. It’s weird, I’m usually a right round house to the head kind of fighter, but this is different and it’s where I prefer to be. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to look at her, maybe it’s just adapting my abilities to the demands of the individual fight, either way, I knee again and again and accidentally knee her to the head. I’m given a warning by the ref. But I do it again, it’s not intended but pulling her into my knee, her head seems to automatically come down. She hits me to the nose; I feel liquid come out but don’t see blood.

Watching the video, I see that I’m fighting tentatively. I’m not landing round houses and am wide open to head punches. I lack the fury. I land a few face shots, and see her head tip back, but she comes back strong, she’s pressuring me well.

I stare at Deb at the first rest minute. It feels bad to emit my fight focus on her, but I need to, I don’t even know if she notices.

The second round is a little tougher. I’m certain that the 2 Debs know to go for my nose, I can’t blame them, you have to seek out your winning edge, and busting my nose is a good idea, I rarely cover. It feels like Deb is doing nothing other than going for my face. I front kick her to the head, it lands, she comes back with a flurry and I know my chin is way up in the air. At some point I feel my nose go, but it doesn’t feel too different from any other hit. I take her back into clinch, she feels like a rag doll in my arms, I just swing her around, and throw knees.

Having Tal in my corner makes me feel safe, but it also makes the whole thing confusing, it feels like sparring at school only it isn’t. There’s blood all over my face, all over my white bra, all over his sweatshirt cuffs. His only advice is “go all the way, use your reach”.

The last round I come out with a front kick then go straight into clinch, I throw about 6 clean knees, wishing she’d just go down. In the video you can see us throw combos and then kind of let them trail off. This is a real fight, but one with a conscience, it’s not unfettered, even though I know we’re both trying really hard to go full on. I throw a sweet left kick to the head. A few seconds later she houses my nose again. I taste a lot of blood on my lips.

The bell rings and we immediately hug. I’m fucking glad it’s over.

Tal takes off my headgear and is trying to clean up my face, I ask him how bad my nose is and he gently ignores the question.

I win. I’m happy. My first fight. It’s over.

With my gloves off, I feel my nose and realise it is very wrong. It’s crunching, and by the look on Kate’s face, very fucked up. I find an EMT; he shoves some pliers-y things up each nostril and confirms a break with anterior bleeding. He asks if I want him to set it -yes. So he holds onto my nose, pulls it with all his might then shoves it back up into my skull. I start yelling, “Yessssir” and “Give it tomme good”. Sudden Tourette’s Syndrome. He resets it 3 times. It was actually pretty comical.

I go to the bathroom, flush the toilet and cry cry cry.

Then I come out to watch Kris fight. If she wins, I will be fighting her, another classmate, in the finals, if she loses, I will be fighting her opponent. The girl is tall, taller than me which is something I hadn’t counted on, usually I’m the one with reach. She’s also from The Wat –unofficially our rival school. She takes Kris into the clinch a lot, Kris struggles to get out but once out, throws clean legs and punches. Still, this girl loves the clinch and keeps reeling Kris back into it.

Kris loses, and I’m now nervous.

I don’t know if I want to go on. The broken nose scares me. I think of that myth about splinters of a broken nose lodging in one’s brain. I think that I may have lost my focus. I think how lame it would be to stop, that I still don’t know what it feels like to fight a stranger. I feel like I want out. But I feel like I’d be a failure. On Friday I knew, without a doubt, that I was ready, that I was doing this for no one other than myself, but now I’ve lost all that clarity. I’m afraid; I’m worried what people would think if I quit. I’m worried I’d fight for pride.

I have a full on break down in the car with my girls, crying like a baby. They are so supportive, they are so comforting, but we all know only I can make the decision.

So I go to the pool. Bikinis make everything better.

Of COURSE, who is at the pool? The people from The Wat. Not the girl I’m fighting, but her classmates and the notorious Kru Phil Nurse. They’re boisterous and conspicuous. I need to ice my nose and I’m swollen so badly but I don’t want them to see how f’ed up I am.

I call Gavin and Kevin and they tell me I should fight. Kru Steve says there’s an 80% chance my nose will get knocked out again, and that the school wouldn’t be “too bothered” if I forfeited. At dinner I can barely eat, but I know that if I’m going to continue, I have to. Tal says I’ll regret it if I don’t fight. I have until morning to decide.

Sunday: 7a.m. Without thinking I put my pink shorts back on. I look in the mirror and my face is so messed up. I look like one of those lizard cyborgs in Sci Fi shows, the bridge of my nose is huge and my eyes look retarded. I stare at myself, and realise that I WANT to do this, that my nose is fucked so I might as well just go kamikaze.

No one looks at me. Not the Krus, not my entourage, not my teammates, not the other fighters. I look rough. At The Showplace things feel different. I’m quiet, struggling to get focused. Trying to look tough and together. It feels like people are worried about me fighting again, I realise I don’t need them to think I can do it, I know I can. Steve tapes my hands. We don’t talk much. With my gear on I hit myself in the face a couple times. I have to accept the fact that my nose will get bashed, and hitting it myself I realise it won’t be that bad anyway.

I ask Macro Deb to tell me my weak points from the fight the day before. I ask Kris to tell me how it was to fight the girl (her name is Chantal) -to give me some insider clues. The last thing Kris tells me is that Chantal refused to shake her hand –that, I think, is not nice…

I don’t feel like warming up, but I do. Chantal is at her team’s area, shadow boxing. I eye her, she’s skinny, she has reach on me but not by much, I don’t see muscle tone, she looks sheepish, but I can’t let that fool me. She squirms a little as I patently stare her down.

By now a lot more people are wearing Camilla the Killah t-shirts.

There’s no going back, I’m in the ring, Kru Steve is putting Vaseline on my face and telling me to come out hitting, that there is no time to wait, to keep my chin on my chest and throw front kicks to her lungs and straight rights to her throat.

I stare at her. She lacks focus. Her teammates are flamboyant and noisy.

I’ll tell you right now, the only thing I remember was watching her face, full of shock and confusion, fly backwards as her ass hit the ground.

The recap is from watching the video; otherwise it’s all a blur.

I go from utterly static in my corner to stepping right out and throwing a string of punches. She keeps going backwards, not throwing a thing, and I just keep on, she’s caught totally off guard, we go into clinch, and I chuck her to the ground. There is an amazing feeling of power, a real injection of adrenaline when you knock someone to the ground and instinctively you kind of stand over them, raring to go, a little puffed up, literally being held back by the ref –it’s galvanizing.

So she gets up and I instantly send her back down to the ground with a front kick. She gets up AGAIN and after an exchange of hits we go to clinch and I throw her BACK on the ground. I kept the pressure on her the whole time, all she gave me was clinch and even then it wasn’t great, her knees never landed, and I could rest while she panted away, plus, I was stronger, and eventually, always threw her out of the grip. Most of the time was spent knocking her into the ropes, watching her bounce off right back into my right. We wasted a lot of good fighting time hanging around in her lazy clinch. But whatever, she didn’t hit my nose once.

Kru Steve is an incredible corner man, instilling me with confidence, guidance, and implicit comfort. He was direct, telling me cleanly what I needed to do. My instructions were to front kick, a lot, then fake a front kick and come in with an over hand right. Suffice it to say, Steve knows what he’s talking about.

I won, unscathed, jubilant.

So the girls piled into the van, and we set off for home. I kept chuckling, it felt good, satisfying, and to think I almost didn’t go all the way.

I donned my medal the whole way home. On the way we stopped off at a beautiful little crab shack I know in Maryland and I put away a bucket of beers -we even got a couple of molten chocolate cakes on the house.

Beautiful.

Gaius the Handsome and Micro Deb also took home medals. Everyone fought relentlessly, win or lose. The entire weekend was inspirational. Extraordinary. I can’t stress enough how much of a team effort the process was. I would not have been capable of any of this had it not been for the encouragement, advice, love, help and dedication of everyone I know. I’m really sad it’s over.

Love

-Camilla