A Three-Minute Fight Worth a Million-Dollar Lesson

Lessons I learned from my first boxing fight

Recalling that moment when I stepped into the ring for the first time still gives me goosebumps, but before getting into that, let me start from the beginning.

It all started when I decided to get myself enrolled in the amateur boxing championships and enrolled myself 5 months prior. To be honest, working my ass off by sacrificing yummy food, alcohol, parties, and spending hours in the gym and the ring for 5 months wasn’t easy.

Five months later, the big day arrived.

I had loads of confidence in myself before the fight, but unfortunately, I lost the fight that I prepared for 5 months. Even though I felt lost, hurt, and disappointed, but most importantly I have learned some crucial qualities and lessons from the fight that will live forever with me.

I’m not an expert in teaching people about life lessons and how to live their life, instead, I thought I could share my experience and the learning outcome through a personal story of mine. I have listed down the best 5 lessons I learned from my first fight by connecting these lessons to actual scenarios I went through.

1. You need the courage to do something challenging

Not everyone is brave enough to enter the boxing ring, it really needs some courage. I had the courage back then and even now to take steps on my upcoming endeavors. I never thought of backing off from the fight; rather, I faced the situation very much like a badass.

Courage is what gave me the ability to put away my fear of failure and helped me take the first steps, Courage helped me to attempt the things that I have not tried before, despite my fear of failing.

“Courage is the secret sauce that allows you to act despite your fears” — Narayan Kamath

What I’m saying is, courage can take you places you wouldn’t even imagine, this doesn’t have to be specific in entering a boxing match, that was just an example of how I proved myself worthy by being courageous.

For example, you can be a person who’s afraid to write and publish your first book, but by being courageous you’ll be able to hurdle over the fear of failing. The fear is gonna be with you just for the first time, and it will fade away when you face it like a boss.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better” — Stephen King

Once you get hands-on achieving the dream, nothing can/will stop you, all that you need is a spoon of courage then automatically you’ll see the results flowing in.

2. It is “Okay” to lose

Yes! That’s me in red, head down and embarrassed. I can still feel how the referee announced the winner of the fight by raising my opponent's hand. I admit, that moment was heartbreaking. That moment felt like all the hard work I have put into this fight has just been a waste, felt like boxing is not the sport for me, but I was terribly wrong.

I can remember when I was a kid that one cricket match that I scored to make the entire team win, the way the crowd cheered me, the exuberance of my teammates, and the beaming smile of my parents. Winning made me feel good like I’ve achieved something great and beyond, but it never forced me to self-reflect and self-improve, unfortunately winning never made me a better person.

Failure isn’t so bad. It teaches us how to be people who can carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. — Peter Economy

The common problem with winning is that we never get the chance to face our demons. Learning how to deal with the punches is the toughest part of life when you think you can’t move on. The ones who inevitably succeed are those with the ability to dig deep inside themselves and find ways to overcome their failures without falling apart. I strongly believe that I’m one of them.

3. Commitment and dedication is only what matters

When it comes to commitment and dedication, I believe I gave my heart and soul to boxing and worked hard till the last day. It was all about love and passion that drove me to do wonders that I’ve never even thought about.

Shedding my body weight from 78Kgs — 67Kgs wasn’t easy at all, but I had to, in order to fight in the welterweight category which is appropriate for me. Losing more than 10Kgs in a span of 3 months is still a dream for many. I’d have never done such a thing in my life if it wasn’t for boxing. The commitment and dedication I had towards boxing made me work hard and harder. I felt so fit and strong after the transformation.

I never missed a training session. In reality, my punctuality sucks big time! Never been for lectures on time, I was always the last and late person to show up when we plan on outings. But when it comes to boxing, it was magical, I was the first person to show up for training every day and always started my workout even before the training actually started.

The love I had for boxing was out of this world, even though I was physically in the classroom, I used to dream about boxing. As you can see in the image below, this was drawn while I was in the classroom. I believe this image portrays the love and passion I had towards boxing.

4. It is all about gaining experience

This fight was my first ever experience getting into the ring and facing an actual opponent when hundreds of audiences were watching. This was a fantastic experience that I’d feel the same way even after 20 years from now.

During the period of the training season, the boxing club was my home and my boxing mates were my family, I made a number of good and valuable new friendships and the bond between us got stronger day by day. We were comrades for each other, fighting for the same cause.

The photo above was taken when I had a sparring session with a senior who had around 7 years of experience in the boxing field. Sparring with my seniors helped me learn new techniques and various other things that gave me an amount of overwhelming experience.

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.” — Randy Pausch

5. Learn from the mistakes

Turning my mistakes into valuable life lessons was my take from the fight. I used to replay the footage, again and again, every single day for at least 4–5 months until I understood my flaws.

Learn, Adapt, and Improvise — first I learned what went wrong, then I accepted my failure, and finally worked on becoming the stronger than ever version of me. When I started to improvise, results flowed in, I followed a balanced diet that doesn’t affect my weight, hit the gym, and worked on my techniques and power.

If I never entered that ring for my first fight, I’d not be the man I am right now. I’ll just be another boxer who’s afraid to lose, with less experience and knowledge.

Conclusion

To sum up, I’d say each and every incident happens in our life for a reason, it’s purely in our hands whether we extract the lessons out of it and make use of it or just throw the opportunity into the bin.

We live in a very much competitive world, you can’t be the only one to win every single time, there are times that you’ll fail too regardless of how much effort and love you’re investing. we are competing with numbers here, so losing is totally fine and acceptable, The question is “do you accept and learn from your failure?”. If your answer is “yes” then you’re already heading towards success. This will open endless opportunities and pathways in life.

If just one chapter of my life can give me this much confidence and life lessons, surely anyone can learn from their own lives, there’ll be chapters you should dig in deeply to extract the lessons out of it. So always remember my dear friends, giving up is never an option.

You never lose until you actually give up — Mike Tyson

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it.