The Death Instinct

I

n Greek Mythology, Thanatos is the death drive, an instinct for death, a god of death.  It probably exists in all of us. It explains why we embrace a violent streak hidden deep in the core of our beings. It probably explains why violence has gone hand in hand with most kinds of human entertainment. Don’t we even wildly cheer two cocks fighting to the death in enclosures? Don’t we stream to boxing contests if not to witness the knockouts?

 I am a pugilist, a professional boxer, and I suspect that I have a slightly higher dosage of this death drive in me than the average man in the street for in the boxing ring you live like you are dying. It explains why Miyawa Mitoko died in the ring, died because he had tempted fate and paid for it with his life.  He too was a modern gladiator and I had killed him.

I was at the tail end of my career, He was starting his; It was a lucky punch from me that had brought him down, a sucker punch that saw life ebb away from him at the prime of his life.

But he had it coming.

H

e had it coming. It is lonely in a boxing ring as few activities in life are as physically demanding as exchanging fisticuffs in a controlled environment; a three minute fight in the ring, I suspect, is a hundred times more exhausting than doing the marathon. While I had for six weeks trained aggressively for the fight against this new upstart.  Mitoko had taken it easy, at least from the social media reports.  He tempted the fates, training only when he felt like and then not pushing the body enough, barely moving a muscle. The grapevines incessantly mentioned his late nights almost daily and the bevvy of beauties who graced his bed. Something unimaginable for a serious boxer, six weeks to a fight.

On the memorable night of his death, I had heard Mitoko in the adjoining dressing room self-psyching for the fight, He was singing loudly in his local dialect. It was a shrill disconcerting voice, periodically interspersed with some form of barking almost akin to a wolf.  

Misawa Mitoko being the challenger had moved out to the ring first. He was, as always, dressed in baggy black shorts with a silver lace running on the sides and black boxing boots. No socks. He climbed into the ring with tepid cheers and scattered boos. I had followed next as a champion, walking one step after another slowly and deliberately outward a sign of calm. Turmoil inside.

The bell had sounded loud and Mitoko had rushed at me like a tiger, throwing hard shots after hard shots, intending to go for an early shower.  His jabs were fast, flicking like lightning and pounding my body incessantly. By the middle of the round, the torrent of punches had slowed me; I was also bleeding from a cut in the eyebrow and was completely winded. The first round ended with me holding to the ropes after a haymaker punch had struck me under the heart. Blows on the heart can drive the wind and will out of a man.

The second round was a replica of the first round with Mitoko leading the fight. I danced, bobbed, weaved, ducked, blocked and parried all his punches but then he was fast, too fast. The few jabs I threw were always years off target. The bell saved me as a sledgehammer had left me stunned tossing me like a tea bag on the canvas. As I was going down, Mitoko had smirked at me from gnarled teeth:

 “Agua Mala!  He had sneered “You whore.”

My coach led me to my corner for the welcome breather. I heard or felt nothing, no sound, no noise.  All I heard was the head under the water emptiness.

“You are doing fine” my coach muttered. “You are doing fine”. He repeated. I suspected hopelessly.

And suddenly there was hope.

My coach had noticed that Mitoko had grabbed the bottle of the water bottle from his seconder's hand and was gulping water unashamedly. Boxers only sip water between rounds as gulping water leads to the water sloshing in the boxer’s tummy totally slowing him down. No boxer has ever won a fight after gulping any liquid between rounds.  Mitoko’s action was therefore unwarranted and an affirmation then that instinct had taken over  training.

My coach was now smiling: “He is breathing hard” He commented, “He is blowing!!”

B

lowing in the boxers jargon is when a fighting boxer yearns for more air in the lungs and opens his mouth to get the full complement of air as if the nostrils seem not wide enough.

Normally taciturn my coach was now ecstatic.

“Take your time in the third round,” He says “Work only on the body, kill the body and the head will die.

He grins, “Set him up. Don’t try to knock him out”

The bell sounded.  And once again Mitoko swarmed over me overwhelming me by applying constant pressure, taking away my spacing and timing, closing inside me and delivering flurries of hooks and uppercuts. The home crowd was silent.

I was completely subdued with the barrages raining, I found myself merely putting up a passive defence trying to stay in my feet and not getting hurt. It was all over I thought. The belt was gone, I was no longer a champion and surprisingly I did not care. I had been outclassed.

Even without seeing him, I sensed the referee moving in to stop the fight.

With a sense of desperation, I reached back, swung back my fist in a primitive way all the way from planet Jupiter and threw a punch; thrown without hope but a sledgehammer nevertheless and a lucky punch.

You never see the knockout punch. The punch landed squarely on that angle between Mitoko’s ear and the shoulder. His eyes bulged and he grunted almost comically and went down in a heap. Blood dripping from my face I stumbled to the neutral corner fast as the referee commenced on the mandatory count.

“Stay down” I begged Mitoko from my heart. “Stay down”

He obliged me, opened his mouth, spewed a projectile of vomit, and stayed down forever.

Young Mitoko Miyawa was cremated a few hours later.

Society’s barbarism and death instincts were vividly portrayed with how the press concentrated not on the loss of life but on the beautiful fight the evening before. The press loved it, yapping about the fight. They were loud on how an old geezer had wasted the life of a promising young boxer inside the ring. That boxing was going to be worse off from Mitoko’s death. It talked about Mitoko’s unbeaten runs and his Olympic gold medal, they talked about how fleet-footed he was, his perfect timing, his intelligent use of the ring, his explosive right hand. He had style, they added, a rhythm to roll in with the hard punches from the opponents as if eating them out. They chorused, His head movement superb, they added, he rolled from the waist.

I was briefly described as “lead-footed”, clumsy, and “Vaseline Legged”. My knockout punch was described as a mere lucky punch. They conveniently forgot that I too was an Olympic medallist.

 The indifference to his death was also glaring from my team as later in the evening, a victory party was held in my honour and praises were heaped on me. I kept gawking.

A victory party? More of a condolence party for me.

It doesn’t matter. What matters was that the sense of homo sapiens's brutality despite the huge technological jump is still at its prime. That we are no different from Caesar of the Roman Republic who assuaged his restless subjects with gory scenes of underfed lions tearing up unarmed gladiators. And the crowds loved it. After the gory scenes the popularity rating of the Emperor rose as the citizenry was now satiated; temporary yes, but then satiated for a time growing restless again for another numbing sensation of even more brutality. Until the only sensation left was that of sensation itself as sensations getting ever more brutal and violent to impress the numbed soul.

T

The bell clangs loudly, and I bite the mouth guard hard, roll my neck, tap my face with the gloves and  I shuffle forward to meet yet another opponent keen to explode me to eternity.  Probably we the modern gladiators are getting it right. We live like we are dying; for without death, what would life be and what chance would it have to mean anything?