Junior Surin
Today, Su Lin and his brothers open a boxing gym as a coach
Qi Moxiang (right) and He Zongli practice in practice
He Zongli and his three gold belts
At the beginning of the new century, boxer Qi Moxiang left the professional boxing arena and returned to his hometown of Huili County, Sichuan Province, and began to lead the children to practice boxing voluntarily from the selection of Miao miao. In the past 20 years, in the depths of the mountains with difficult conditions, he has cultivated many teenagers who love boxing and have boxing dreams, some of whom have been selected into the provincial team, some of whom have embarked on the road of professional competition and won the title of gold belt. Boxing has changed the fate of many children in the mountains.
In 2013, Qi Moxiang and his protégés He Zongli and Miao Yunfei "starred" in the documentary "A Thousand Hammers and a Hundred Tempers", which won the Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary, which received widespread attention. Eight years have passed in the blink of an eye, and to this day, Qi Moxiang is still rooted in Huili, doing his best to discover and cultivate boxers.
After entering the national team and experiencing professional boxing in China, he eventually returned to Huili to teach boxing voluntarily
Whenever he saw the students playing beautiful games, Qi Moxiang, who was over forty years old, was relieved and often sighed that "where has the time gone", and he seemed to see his young self in stubble after stubble of children. Qi Moxiang is the earliest professional boxer in China, he participated in the national boxing championships, was selected for the national team, and later played professional boxing, and is a witness to the development of professional boxing into China.
At the end of the 1980s, for the purpose of exercising, Qi Moxiang and Zhao Zhong, a boxing coach who was pursuing his third sister at the time, punched and entered the door of boxing. In two years of training, he not only knew the boxing kings Ali, Leonard, and Hagler, but also fell in love with boxing and longed for one day to stand in the boxing ring like his idol.
In the 1991 Sichuan Provincial Championships, Qi Moxiang won the 48 kg championship and was selected to be transferred to the provincial team. For him, everything about the provincial team is new, "the muscles of the wrestling team athletes are particularly developed, and the girls in the martial arts team look so beautiful." However, the classification of the provincial team is also very clear, "like us who have just entered the provincial team, we eat a large stove, the professional team eats a small stove, and the athletes with outstanding achievements eat a special stove." ”
The training of the provincial team is very hard, every morning at six o'clock to start training, including intensity running, speed running, and various strength training in the morning, replaced by technical training in the afternoon, often dozens of rounds of training, actual combat, followed by sandbags, hand targets, all training is completed at more than eight o'clock in the evening, the sky is dark.
Qi Moxiang was deeply impressed, and there was also an extreme training once a week, "Our team of more than 20 division brothers all stood in the boxing ring, wearing boxing helmets, you have to play in front of everyone for 45 seconds or a minute, a circle down, people will collapse." He remembered that from the Spring Festival of the year he arrived at the provincial team, he had not returned home for a full decade. One year of Chinese New Year's Eve, the coach arranged for them to play in real combat, "each team member had to play 5 minutes, 8 rounds, from 9 o'clock in the morning to 7:30 in the evening, when we went to the large bathhouse with a blue nose and swollen face, looking down at ourselves who were bleeding and sweating, doubly missing the happy relatives of the family, everyone sang in unison." After a winter training, Qi Moxiang was selected to be transferred to the professional team, and since then, he has begun to have a salary of 71 yuan per month, "The first salary I received more than 500 yuan, there were more than half a year of reissuance in the first half year, wow, I was particularly happy, sent 300 yuan to my family, and left more than 200 for myself." ”
Boxing is a competition divided by weight, the 1995 National Boxing Championships were held in Panyu, Guangdong Province, Qi Moxiang weighed 56 kilograms at that time, but if he wanted to participate in the 48 kilogram class, he had to drop seven or eight kilograms to qualify. Since the first two months of the game, he has not entered the canteen, others go to eat, he stayed in the dormitory, the brothers came back to bring him a small piece of beef, or an apple, a banana, and add some ginseng pills and ejiao pulp, while maintaining a high-intensity, high-density training before the game. "There are still ten days of competition, every time I get up from bed, I will sit down in front of my eyes black", you can imagine, in the game, he stumbled and lost.
Waiting for the Eighth National Games, the coach arranged for him to participate in the 54 kg competition, this time only need to drop one or two kg. He was in very good shape, full of strength, played smoothly all the way, and in the semi-finals, he had an absolute advantage. "The brothers in the audience all gave thumbs up and shouted No.1", and unexpectedly, when the referee announced the result of the game, he raised the opponent's hand.
Qi Moxiang was particularly depressed and went home for a few days, he remembered that the night before returning to the team, his father sat on the sofa and said to him, "In fact, it doesn't matter whether you succeed or fail, this is also an experience worth remembering in your life." With the warmth of home and the trust of his father, he returned to the provincial team to continue training hard. In 1998 he won the second place in the national championship, was successfully selected to transfer to the national team, just in time for the 1999 National Boxing Championships, but also for the 2000 Olympic Games selection, the first time he met the host team, he carefully pondered the opponent, arranged all the technical and tactical preparations, and finally the referee still did not raise his hand.
He couldn't remember how he left the boxing ring, and he couldn't sleep that night, and he couldn't think straight. It was almost dawn, he went out for a walk, walked to a commissary, subconsciously lifted the phone to dial the third sister's house, early in the morning, it was the elder brother-in-law who answered the phone, he felt that something was wrong, he repeatedly asked, the brother-in-law told him that his father died, "My head buzzed, empty." In the end, I only heard the brother-in-law on the other end of the phone say, you hurry back, pay attention to safety on the road. "Qi Moxiang rushed home, his father had been buried, and it turned out that no one in the family had told him to prepare for the game." Not being able to send my father is the most regrettable thing in my life. Thinking of the warm night before parting with his father, thinking of his hard work day after day and year after year, but did not get the desired results, he left the provincial team in disappointment.
Qi Moxiang went to Shenzhen to work, wanting to prove that he "left boxing, I can do it", but deep inside he often felt lost. Fast forward to 2004, the first year that professional boxing entered China. One day, Qi Moxiang received a call from master brother Liu Gang, "Ask me if I want to play professional boxing, wow, at that moment, I was particularly excited, I want to fight!" ”
Qi Moxiang, who put everything aside, became a boxer in a professional boxing club, Liu Gang is a promoter and agent of professional boxing in the Asia-Pacific region, and also a coach of Qi Moxiang. He told Qi Moxiang to rest when he didn't want to train one day, and he didn't have to force himself. During the game, I will also ask him, how much do you want to play in this game? Qi Moxiang realized, "Professional boxing is what I want." ”
In more than two years of professional boxing, Qi Moxiang achieved 7-6 wins and 5 K.O results, ranking from the second-most featherweight in the Asia-Pacific region to the top ten. Helplessly, the domestic just starting professional boxing was very difficult, and soon he faced the situation of no competition to play. At that time, his enlightenment coach Zhao Zhong, who was suffering from diabetes and could no longer engage in more hard work, Qi Moxiang resolutely returned to his hometown and took over as a boxing coach.
After filming the documentary "A Thousand Hammers and a Hundred Hammers", someone asked him to go outside to develop his career, but he was reluctant to leave his children behind
At first, Qi Moxiang, who worked as a boxing coach, had no staffing and no salary, and volunteered to teach the children to box. In his eyes, the children from the mountains were very simple, and he was willing to do this job. There is a child named Miao Yunfei, who still makes him unforgettable, "When I first selected him that year, I thought his body was particularly good and his strength quality was also very good. His home is more than 20 kilometers away from the county seat, he comes out at five o'clock every day, rides for an hour and a half to the sports center for training, then goes to school to study, comes to training at seven o'clock in the evening, and rides home until the end of the training at 9:30. Just like this for three years, such a child really makes me admire. ”
Three years later, Miao Yunfei's achievements gradually became prominent, and he won the provincial championship, the provincial games championship, and entered the provincial team. Unfortunately, later, because of the complete opposition of his family, he could not play professional boxing, and finally had to go to the construction site to work.
While practicing boxing with the children, Qi Moxiang learned that in June 2011, there was a WBC Asia Pacific second-class gold belt championship. After thinking about it again, he decided to fight again and fulfill his years of boxing dreams. "It was my last game, and almost all of the kids in the audience were shouting and shouting for me, and I thought I had to play beautifully and play well."
Cruelly, in the third round, he was knocked down by K.O. For a long time, Qi Moxiang couldn't walk out. The whole county is full of people who know each other, and he feels a strange look everywhere, "I walk on the road every day with my head down, afraid of being recognized, and I have doubts in my heart, can I still teach the children?" He did not expect that during that time, the children, without exception, gathered around him, leaning on their small faces, with tears in their eyes, they said, "Brother Zi, in fact, you did not lose, we will train hard, we must fight for you." Qi Moxiang's tears almost fell, "I must stand up and teach them well." ”
More than 30 years of boxing life, let Qi Moxiang learn three things, the first is to face bravely and not give up; the second is to fall down and must get up; the third is to persevere for the ideal. He calmed down and led the children to practice boxing, pouring all his efforts, he wanted them to have a skill, and in the future they would rely on their own skills to get out of the mountains.
The children of the boxing team are all twelve or thirteen years old, which is the age group that is particularly skinny and wild, and the culture class is generally not very good. If anyone makes a mistake or fights in the class or something, Qi Moxiang will come forward to the class teacher to say good things, and sometimes go to the school leader to intercede, "The child is young and does not understand things, please forgive him once, this child must go to school, can not punish him." When he returned, he would sternly set rules for the children, Xi Wu first learns morality, you are not allowed to talk dirty, you are not allowed to play with the little outside. ”
After filming the documentary "A Thousand Hammers and a Hundred Tempers" national tour, someone invited Qi Moxiang to go outside to develop his career, but he was reluctant to leave his children behind, and finally decided to stay, he felt that he was very happy with his children every day.
The children were admired and afraid of Moxiang, and Surin, who was a "little bit" at that time, was deeply impressed by the way the coach rode a bicycle, "No matter what he did, he always rode a bicycle, every morning after training, sent us to school, saw us enter the classroom, and then he left." When the class was over, we gathered at the school and watched him ride over from a distance. ”
He remembers that no matter what mistakes he made when he was a child, Coach Qi would forgive them, "When I was a child, once someone called a lot of people to come to the school to block me and want to beat me, he knew it, rushed over to protect me, told those people that this was my student, I couldn't fight, and then asked me to apologize to others until I watched us shake hands and reconcile." When he came back, he told me, even if someone spits in your face, what can you do? What's not to be tolerated? Coach Qi also called us to a meeting and said that we must not do anything, you are people who practice boxing, they are people who have not practiced anything, then you can't go with them. Although we were not convinced at that time, we were all more afraid of him. I was particularly afraid to look into his eyes, to think of him as an owl, and to be afraid when I looked at him. As I grew older, I felt more and more that what he said was profound. ”
Looking back, Su Lin felt that Coach Qi was really worried, "We lived under the grandstand of the gymnasium at that time, dozens of people put up and down beds in it, the stands were oblique, the space was small, there was no ventilation, it was very stuffy in the summer, and it was very cold in the winter. Coach Qi was not married at the time, his home was not far away, but he also lived with us under the stands. He lived in the front room, and would often come to see us in the middle of the night, afraid that we would run out and surf the Internet, and all his thoughts were on us. Coach Qi trained very strictly, meeting once a week, sometimes talking about the heart, sometimes taking us to play football and adjust the state. Sometimes he would take us out to play, thinking we were tired and too nervous, he went to buy a lot of beef and lamb himself, took us out for a picnic, found a small river, where a bunch of people barbecued, ate and played. At that time, we did not charge tuition for boxing training, and the picnic was also invited by him out of his own pocket. ”
He Zongli remembered that once when he pretended to be ill during a morning run, Coach Qi called someone to wake him up, and he did not get up and sleep. When everyone finished running and came back," Coach Qi called me up to let me run again, and then asked me what I thought, I said I wanted to win the championship, but I always couldn't play well, he often gave me guidance, without exaggeration, just like treating his own children. ”
"He said something that particularly touched me at the time: Punching is more and more courageous."
He Zongli later became Qi Moxiang's proud protégé, "He was a very introverted and shy child when he was first elected, but he had a strong spirit in his bones. After several years of training, He Zongli won the provincial championship and was selected for the provincial team. However, he did not achieve excellent results in the provincial team for a long time, and he failed to solve the problem of staffing, at that time, his family conditions were difficult, and there was a younger brother who was in elementary school, and the family had to bear his living expenses of more than 800 yuan per month. He Zongli remembered, "Coach Qi took advantage of the free time to play the Intercontinental Boxing Championship to come to the provincial team to see me, and we sat in the stands and talked for more than an hour, and he said a sentence that particularly touched me: Punching should be more and more frustrated and courageous. ”
Because the results of playing the youth championship have been flat, He Zongli finally left the provincial team to work in Shenzhen, and once fell into a "particularly decadent" life. At the low point of his life, he received a call from Coach Qi encouraging him to play professional boxing. Although he had not retrained for three years, his heart was on fire, and he immediately went north to train, and after only one month of training, he won the championship in his first professional boxing league.
In 2017, on the recommendation of Qi Moxiang, He Zongli signed with Xi'an Wanding Boxing Club. Standing in the boxing ring again, he especially cherished every game, and for more than three years in Xi'an, he thought about the game, getting up at 4:30 a.m. every day and running in the morning, and then the training room, canteen, dormitory, and life at three o'clock. Even when he goes home for the New Year, he still trains, "even if I Chinese New Year's Eve I run", he knows in his heart, "Miss this age, the dream of this life may not be realized." ”
In just over two years, He Zongli won Sichuan's first WBC Asian Super FlyWeight Intercontinental Gold Belt, WBO Asian Super FlyWeight Intercontinental Gold Belt, and IBO Asian Super Fly Magnitude Intercontinental Gold Belt. But no one expected that the epidemic in 2020 would come, and there would be no competition to play for a long time.
He Zongli has a clear feeling, "Through boxing, I learned how to face failure. My life is also integrated into the spirit of boxing, that is, never give up, the more frustrated the braver. "He remembers the time when he couldn't get the results, and he was almost depressed," He said, "When I played the first Asian gold belt, Coach Qi's children were still in the moon, and he rushed over. I can appreciate that, in addition to concern, it actually continues one of his dreams. After playing ten rounds and getting the golden belt, He Zongli in the boxing ring faced the live broadcast, knelt in front of Qi Moxiang, and they hugged and cried, "At that time, I could not express everything I had experienced in the past 11 years in words, Coach Qi said six words, relief, release, and gratitude, these six words have been affecting me to this day." ”
After 14 years of boxing, He Zongli was particularly grateful for Qi Moxiang's kindness, "Without Coach Qi, I would not have my athletic achievements today, and it can be said that boxing gave me a second life." Now he put down his heavy gold belt and broke into Shanghai with his brothers and opened a boxing gym. In his view, whether it is a gold belt or the honor brought by filming a documentary, like a bouquet of flowers, it will pass after it has bloomed, "after the bustle, it is still necessary to go forward alone." "He often thinks, there is nothing more painful in this world than punching, punching can be passed, what else can not be overcome?" My greatest hope as a coach is to integrate the spirit of boxing into the lives of more people. I also want to continue my boxing dreams through this. If the epidemic stabilizes, I want to fight again. ”
"He taught me to punch and he taught me how to do things"
Qi Moxiang liked Su Lin and felt that he was a fighting child, "At the beginning of the contact confrontation, the more he fought, the better." Su Lin said that when he was a child, the scene of training often appeared in his mind, "Before, there was no light on the plastic track, so we got a wooden stick to poke the ground, and before each training, we first tied the plug board to the wooden stick with tape, and then glued the lamp to it to illuminate." At that time, we didn't even have a boxing ring, so how to fight in real combat? Everyone stood on the plastic track in a circle, equivalent to a boxing ring, and two people played one-on-one inside. As soon as I came into contact with actual combat, the more I played, the more addictive I became. Later, we had some results, and then we divided a place in the gymnasium as a training ground. ”
To this day, Surin remembers that he had spent a whole summer preparing for his first race. He was very small at that time, his weight was also light, not enough to play 45kg, in order to give him a long weight, Qi Moxiang often took him out to eat at night. "I used to think that long weight is a very comfortable thing, and I really experienced it to know that long weight and weight reduction are very miserable." Coach Qi himself paid for me to eat foods with high protein and helpful energy supplements to maintain my weight, and took me to the night market to nibble on big bones and eat the bone marrow inside. But in the first game of that game, I met a very tall person, and I lost and was very depressed. At once, the coach encouraged me to say, it's okay, the first time I come out to play, go back and prepare well. Although I was still very disappointed, I wanted to go back and practice well. ”
At that time, although the players were young, they all knew that Coach Qi was not organized and did not have a salary, "We felt that we did not work hard to get some results out, and we were very sorry for him." "In 2013, when I played the provincial games selection tournament in Sichuan, the whole team couldn't play well, and everyone was particularly guilty," the coach still encouraged us, saying that there should be no baggage, and that it was experienced to come out. Later, in 2013 and 2014, we all held our breath and practiced hard at home, and when we went to Sichuan Guangyuan to play in 2015, everyone fought. That year we played particularly well, winning five championships. Because of the number of championships, in the end, four people were left by the provincial team, and everyone was very happy. ”
After Surin entered the provincial team, although he was separated from Coach Qi, he often received calls from him, "Ask us how we are training on it, and we are not happy." Su Lin especially missed Coach Qi for taking him to the road of boxing, letting him participate in the competition, accumulating experience, and then going out of the mountains to teach boxing and sharing the joy of boxing with more people. In his opinion, Coach Qi not only taught him to punch, but also let him learn how to behave and do things. "Think about it, he is the person who spends the most time with me besides my parents, I have always respected him in my heart, and every spring when I return to my hometown, I have to see him first." From childhood to adulthood, the coach has always told me that I must know how to be grateful, this sentence I remember very clearly, and I myself also hold this mentality to do things, I want to do a good job in the future, we must change the boxing team in our hometown, even if it is to upgrade the training supplies for the team. Surin said.
Text/Reporter Li Zhe
Courtesy photo/ He Zongli Surin