These days, Kimura is back in the middle of the conversation, and people have also mentioned his difficult history and the game that changed his destiny.
Surprisingly, Kimura is the only Japanese boxer who can enjoy decent protagonist treatment in two consecutive matches in China.
Kimura Xiang revealed to us the ecology of Japan's grassroots boxers, and what once trapped him was the struggle between a poor life and a distant future, so what about the grassroots boxer ecology in China?
I talked to A sai, a 21-year-old professional boxer who has played in the system, professional boxing, and under the epidemic, he is teaching Beijing Shoutai fighting, and may be the only person I have ever seen who brushes vibrato but only watches training videos.
The following is an account of this interview. "Ambition", "hope", and "imagination" will be the three key words that connect this story.
- Ambition - Asay's 12 to 16 years old is a smooth road.
Assai was born on horseback in Wenquan County, Bortala Prefecture, a Kazakh, herdsman's son in the border area of Xinjiang. Horse racing, wrestling, all kinds of confrontational sports are the games he has played since he was a child.
In 2012, at the age of 12, he fell two adults in a row on a Naadam, and was picked by the enlightenment coach who watched the hilarity on the side and brought into the sports school boxing team.
The first half year of joining the team is the most difficult, almost all the opponents in the practice are older and more experienced veterans, his deepest impression of this half year is to hold up his arm in the water room again and again to wash nosebleeds - this is the experience of wrestling in the field when he was a child, which nostrils have nosebleeds, he will raise the arm on the other side, but after a training, often two nostrils bleed in unison, which makes him really big for a while.
During this time his ambition was to "fight back".
Apparently, this ambition worked, and the following year, he was selected to enter the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Sports School.
In 14 years, he participated in the all-Xinjiang boxing competition for the first time, and lian ke was a strong opponent until the final loss to the brother of the same team, and won the silver medal in the 75 kg category. He said it was the first time he had clearly identified himself as a boxer.
In 2015, he won the all-Xinjiang championship. In 2016, he successfully defended his title and won the silver medal in the national competition.
In the same year, in fact, he was only 16 years old, eager not to be bound by helmets, eager for KO, he decided to retire and turn to professional boxing.
- Hope - Asai entered professional boxing with hope, but this is a story of losing hope again and again.
After leaving the team, he wanted to go back to his hometown to play for a year.
But not long after, just after the Year, he answered the call of his brother, a 90 kg competition was in short supply of boxers, just taking advantage of his fat, calling him on top, he did not think much, 4 days later completed his professional debut.
Completely unprepared, neglected training, crossed two levels, although he once played several beautiful heavy blows, but in the end he still lost points.
In the second race, he finally returned to the familiar 75 kg class, won the race and equalized. But not long after, the 75 kg class was difficult to match the right opponent, and he was forced to drop to the 72 kg class.
He played ten games the following year, three in a row in 20 days at its peak.
This year, in his memory, was like a sleepwalk. The density of the game is too high, so that he often loses weight once and the damage has not been restored, and then he starts to lose weight again.
This drained his body, and at this stage he was visible to the naked eye decadent, and his muscles began to lose.
72 kilograms is not a comfortable level for him, and the lack of continuity makes it completely difficult for his spirit to make delicate technical training, and preparation has become a monotonous repetition of running and sandbags. At its darkest, he lost five games in a row.
But what can be done about this?
If you don't play, you don't have income, and if you push off a game, you may lose more than just the opportunity of a game – the lack of hope is far more frightening than the economic difficulties.
Boxing is a pyramid that needs to be climbed constantly, and once you fall into a vicious circle, the hope of getting out of the way is more and more distant.
Why wouldn't he want to go back to the healthy 75 kg class? Why wouldn't he want to plan the right career path?
But at this time, he is only 17 years old, and in the country where the boxing market is not yet developed, weeds like Kimura Sho are extravagant expectations - just like in the face of a laborer who works for more than ten hours a day to barely feed himself, what qualifications do you have to ask him to "take the time to learn a skill to change the status quo"?
In 2018, he finally managed to adapt to the rhythm and began to win games and regain his record. But at this moment, the accumulated injuries were found, knee ligament injuries, brain injuries, and doctors ordered him to suspend his career. Hearing this, I can't help but sigh, why do you have to do this? But he had the answer.
- Imagination - Heal the wounds and the epidemic will come. The professional game was completely suspended, and the confused Asai returned to his hometown to help his father and friend work in the mine.
The Gobi Desert in Hotan, at the end of the past, is the confluence of yellow earth and blue sky. There was no signal on his cell phone, and he stayed here for a year. No game schedule, no coaching urging, 8 years of unprecedented freedom.
He thought that life would go on like this, but he couldn't figure out why, he dragged the excavator's discarded tires, smashed them with a sledgehammer, hung them up and beat them with his fists, lifted stones, pulled leather bands to practice strength, and repeated what he had been doing for the past 8 years.
He said he was thankful for that time, the lack of entertainment, the little amount of information intake, the lot of free time, which frantically stimulated his imagination, and he exhausted countless possible futures to find the answer - why did he have to box? Because I like it.
This year, he was unprecedentedly sure that he could not do without boxing, and at the beginning of this year, he came to Beijing Shoutai Fighting to become a boxing coach at the introduction of his teammates. Speaking of this, he said the most sour words of the night:
"Being a coach is really better than playing games and making money."
"Do you still want to play?" I asked him.
"Why don't you make money?" It must be for training. ”
He said teaching people to box is a great thing. Not only is it the sense of accomplishment of passing on the experience to the newcomer, but in the process of watching a student learn boxing from scratch, he can find the mistakes he has made, begin to know himself, and begin to truly understand what boxing is. He said he truly loved teaching people to punch.
I believe very much that he will be a good boxer and a good coach, because he not only loves it, but also pursues and hopes for the sport.
He made me believe that when the hopes of the outside world are not in time, I will create hope myself.
At the end of the day, he said very seriously:
"When I first changed careers before, it didn't go well, it was all a stain on my record, so I trained well, and when the epidemic passed, I would fight back step by step."
I believe that he is not a special individual, he is a microcosm of many hard-working professional boxers in China, and I hope there will be, after all, there are these people who brush vibrato but only watch training videos. Post information about the boxing gym where Asay teaches here, if you happen to be interested in boxing, you may wish to try Asay's class? Support the young boxer we are working on, and he will surely be able to give you the most professional boxing experience. What's more, maybe in a few years, this will be a new boxing king? There is no loss in the shares. Shoutai CTC, here is probably the most cost-effective boxing gym in Beijing, 9 pavilions, all over the city, southeast and northwest, both downstairs in your company, but also next to your home, a card to eat, refuse to trek to practice boxing.
First Thai CTC, not only Asai, not only boxing, Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu, mixed martial arts, the whole first-line coaching lineup, Thai muay thai coaches, European kickboxing coaches, Brazil's jiu-jitsu coaches. As in today's popular encyclopedia of martial arts, experience a variety of different pure training environments in the same city. The number one problem that plagues contemporary young people, "difficulty in choosing", does not exist in Shoutai. A huge boxing gym matrix, representing dozens of coaches, thousands of classmates. Ensure that there are boxing exercises at all times, and the uninterrupted activities in the museum and internal competitions throughout the year are enough to fill the social expectations for a whole year.