On violence: Part I

The other day I was talking to a kid who was recently married and had just had a baby.  He was short and stocky and, like many Colombians, wore braces on his teeth.  The one thing I noticed about him was his eyes: they were blank, almost unseeing, even though he was staring right at me, as if I was not entirely there.  He ran a restaurant in Cali with his brother and was in the middle of making plans to go to Disney World. 

At some point while we were talking, it came out that his father was Henry Loaiza-Ceballos, a/k/a "The Scorpion," a/k/a the Cali Cartel's "Minister of War."  In an incredibly relative way, the Cali Cartel was a less violent organization than the one based in Medellin, which is astounding to think about when you consider Loaiza's crimes. 

Loaiza's signature achievement was probably the Trujillo massacre, which was actually a series of killings that took place between 1988 and 1994 in the town of Trujillo, in southwestern Colombia.  While no one was ever officially charged with the murders, it is believed that Loaiza, along with a Colombian paramilitary organization, organized the murders some 245 and 342 people, many of whom were cut up with chainsaws.  When a local priest tried to alert the authorities, his decapitated body was found floating in the Cacua river the next day.

On hitting

"A fighter's appetite and tolerance for hitting is elemental…Mastering the craft means fashioning a style that takes maximum advantage of one's root capacity for hitting and minimizing one's root capacity for being hit." Carlo Rotella, Cut Time

Embracing pain, for a flabby veal-chop like myself, has not been easy.  Truthfully, I hate it.  

Pooping

I poop some five times a day and wonder whether this is normal. I think not, this pooping, inasmuch as it takes an aweful amount of time.  I cannot imagine our ancestors getting on with so much defecation: such time spent would have left us vulnerable to wild animals and opportunistic enemies.  And yet here I am.  Pooping.  

Hit man

If boxing is about anything, it is about pain; both the intentional infliction of pain upon another human being, and the self-imposed pain that boxers must bear in order to mete out punishment on others.  

"The primacy of hurt supercharges even the smallest detail…and produces the distinctive ozone crackle of bad intentions that attracts some people to boxing and repels many others." Carlo Rotella, Cut Time 

On Mike Tyson

"Bracketed in the sequence of heavyweight all-timers by two media dreamboats—a champion who made boxing seem like political theater and one who makes boxing seem like non-consensual sex—[Larry] Holmes has been overshadowed." Carlo Rotella, Cut Time