Chapter 11 : Golden Gloves Championship

Bang!

In the boxing ring, Link and Mario continue their training.

With Mario's cooperation, he kept changing his attack methods, jabs, straight punches, left hooks, uppercuts, and throwing punches.

He used to be small in stature, and was best at the jab. The jab attack was fast and unexpected, and was not as fast as the straight punch and the swing, but by quickly hitting the effective parts of the opponent's body, he could win by points.

Now that he is taller and heavier, his strength is increasing, and his arms are much longer than before, his offensive style also needs some adjustments.

While ensuring that his jab attack remains sharp, he is also consciously strengthening the training of straight punches, swinging punches, hooks, and throwing punches.

In combination punches, you should also use more straight punches and swinging punches that can cause more damage, so that you can win with one punch at a critical moment.

After practicing for more than an hour, both of them were sweating.

The weather in Miami is relatively humid, so the room needs to be ventilated to feel cool.

The boxing gym has complete ventilation facilities, but the intensity of the exercise is too great, the clothes get wet and dry, dry and wet, and a layer of sweat condenses on the T-shirt.

After a short rest, he began to serve as a sparring partner for Mario.

Mario focuses on offense, and he focuses on defense.

For a boxer, offense and defense are equally important. The boxer who does well on both offense and defense will survive longer in the professional boxing world.

In the past three decades, Tyson is undoubtedly the best boxer on the offensive end.

Tyson has strong offensive capabilities. He always moves forward and never retreats. His boxing moves are clean, his punches are fierce, and he is very wild. He is also very entertaining to watch. He is considered the most aggressive boxer in the history of world professional boxing.

The one who did well on the defensive end was Tyson's old rival Evander Holyfield.

Although Holyfield is also a power boxer, his defensive skills are also extremely superb.

In the two WBA gold belt defense matches in 1996 and 1997, Holyfield used strong defensive counterattack tactics to defeat Tyson twice in a row, forcing Tyson to bite his ear.

Link is a power boxer, but he is not sure if he can deal with those professional boxers with strength alone after turning to professional boxing.

To be on the safe side, he planned to do both offense and defense well and make himself into a hexagonal warrior without any weaknesses.

"Hey! Link, Mario, stop practicing for now. Coach West brought back something interesting."

While the two were training, Reggie, a boxer from the same gym, ran over and shouted excitedly.

"What?"

Link and Mario stopped and jumped out of the ring.

The three of them came to the training area together. West, manager Robinson and the apprentices were all there. Everyone was watching a rectangular machine that was more than two meters high.

"Wow! It's a punch weight tester!"

Mario yelled exaggeratedly, pushed the crowd away, rushed to the testing machine excitedly, felt around it up and down, then turned around and looked at Coach West with a strange expression.

"West, I advised you to buy one a long time ago. I advised you dozens of times but you didn't buy it. Why did you buy it now? Wait, is it because of Link?"

Mario sat down on the ground and said in a resentful tone, "West, I advised you dozens of times but you refused to buy it. The day after Link came, you moved the machine to the boxing gym. Your discriminatory attitude is too obvious. You are discriminating, naked discrimination. Do you understand?"

West glared at him with a dark face and said, "I bought it a long time ago, but it was only delivered today."

"Do you think I would believe it? Why didn't they deliver it earlier or later? Why did they deliver it to my door right after Link arrived? Could it be that the machine manufacturer also knew that a genius had come to our boxing gym and urgently needed this machine for training?"

Mario teased with a huff.

Manager Robinson said with a smile: "Mario, this is true. The punch strength test machine manufacturer is in Nevada. If you bought it yesterday, it will definitely not be delivered today."

"Well, it seems so."

Mario and others accepted this explanation and felt much better.

West and Robinson looked at each other and smiled knowingly.

This machine was bought a long time ago, but the boxing gym was not doing well, so they were too lazy to set it out for Mario and the others to fight around. But things are different when Link comes.

Link is a boxer with great potential, and they don't mind investing more as long as they can help Link with training.

"Get out of the way, let me measure the weight of my punch."

Mario pushed aside a few apprentices who were watching the fun, clenched his fist as big as a sandbag, roared, and smashed it hard on the test target of the test machine.

Bang!

The test target was retracted, and the numbers on the screen began to jump, quickly scrolling from one hundred pounds to seven hundred pounds, and finally stopped at the integer value of 780 pounds.

"780 pounds? Haha, Link, you come and measure yourself."

Mario greeted.

Link waved his hand and asked Reggie and the other four to test first. He wanted to see if the test machine was accurate.

Reggie and four other boxers lined up to take the test. Except for Reggie who weighed 620 pounds, the other three's scores were all over 500 pounds.

"Link, it's your turn, hurry up and fight."

Mario urged.

Link put down his notebook, stood in front of the testing machine, clenched his right fist, and hit the target hard. The numbers on the screen were flipping rapidly, and everyone stared at the screen with wide eyes.

Everyone shouted in surprise when they saw the data break through 1000 pounds. In the end, Link's punch weight stabilized at 1430 pounds.

"Wow, 1430 pounds. I heard that Tyson could only fight at 1800 pounds at his peak, and Holyfield was 1600 pounds. Link is about to catch up with them."

Mario exclaimed.

"No, no, Link is a middleweight, Tyson and the others are heavyweights. A middleweight's punch weight is almost catching up with the heavyweight champion. That's amazing."

Reggie looked at Link with adoration.

The other boxers and apprentices all looked at Link with worshipful eyes, as if they had a boxing champion by their side.

Link smiled lightly. The punch force testing machine can only estimate the value of the boxer's punch at the moment of punching. It is an estimate, not the real 1400 pounds.

In addition, in a boxing match, the opponent is a living person who can move, dodge and block, and will not be like a dummy, waiting for others to attack.

It takes a certain amount of skill to hit an opponent with a 1,400-pound fist.

Most KOs (knock outs) that occur in the boxing ring are caused by the fighter failing to defend against the opponent's heavy punches and being hit directly on the head, resulting in fainting.

This is also the reason why the boxing world attaches great importance to the KO probability. The more times a boxer KOs his opponents, the stronger he is and the better his skills are.

Although the data measured by this machine is not very accurate, it is a good measuring tool.

His strength is slowly increasing during training. With this machine, he can understand his own growth more accurately and make corresponding training plans.

"West, I'm going to take a few more tests to see what the average is."

Link said.

"good."

West took a notebook and began to record the test.

On the punch weight testing machine, Link punched 10 times in a row within three minutes. The best result of his right punch was the third time, 1480 pounds, and the worst was the ninth time, 1130 pounds. The average was 1350 pounds.

The best result for the left hand is 1310 pounds, the worst result is 880 pounds, and the average is 1020 pounds, which is quite different from the right hand.

That is to say, in the boxing ring, even if he throws ten punches in a row, the weight of his right fist can remain over 1,100 pounds and his left fist can remain over 1,000 pounds.

If one of these ten punches hits the opponent's head, the opponent will be knocked out.

With the speed and skills shown by Link, the probability of missing all ten punches is too small, and the probability of him KOing his opponents in future games will be extremely high.

Link took the notebook and looked at it, memorizing a few key data. He would test it once a month in the future to see how much progress he had made.

"Link, I want to take the test too. Can you help me remember it?"

Mario yelled.

"Let's get started."

Mario took a deep breath, roared, and bang, bang, bang.

He also struck out 10 times in a row in the Test machine.

It was earth-shattering when it was played, but the measured data was not ideal.

The best result was 810 pounds, the worst was 420 pounds, and the average was less than 600 pounds. This data was considered good for amateur competitions, and the appearance fee for professional competitions would never exceed 1,000.

"Why is there such a big difference?"

Mario looked at Link jealously, his average was less than half of Link's, which meant that two of him added together were equal to Link.

"I'm naturally strong, you don't have to be too envious."

Link laughed.

Mario became even more envious after hearing this. "Innate" means that you can't develop intelligence even if you want to, just like a person telling a monkey that he is naturally smart. Link is such a bastard and he knows how to discourage people.

"Don't be envious. Just practice more and you'll be able to catch up with Link one day."

Coach West said to the others, "You guys continue to test, and remember to turn it off after you're done. Link, let's go to the office and talk."

"good!"

Link nodded and followed Coach West to his office.

Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in West's office, you can see the Miami Zoo and Botanical Gardens across the street. The environment is nice.

"Link, look at this."

Coach West handed over a document.

This is the entry application form for the American Golden Gloves Championship.

The Golden Gloves Championship is the highest level amateur boxing tournament in the United States, and is known as one of the three major amateur boxing events along with the U.S. Amateur Boxing Championship and the U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials.

The Golden Gloves Championship is somewhat more important than the latter two.

Famous boxing champions including Ali, Tyson, Joe Louis, George Foreman, etc., all turned to the professional boxing world after achieving excellent results in the Golden Gloves Championship.

The Golden Gloves Championship is also considered the only way for young American boxers to enter the professional boxing arena.

This is a great platform.

"Link, this year's Golden Gloves Championship starts in early June. There are still ten days left. If you want to become famous early, this is a good opportunity."

West said.

Link nodded his chin, took out a pen, and began to fill out the registration materials.

Participants in the Golden Gloves Championship must be American citizens, between the ages of 18 and 39, and not professional boxers.

There are four levels of competition.

The first level is for the region. All registered contestants will compete in their city first, and the top three in the city will participate in the state championship.

The state championship is the second level.

The third level is the divisional competition, including the Eastern Division, Southeastern Division, Northwestern Division, and Central Division. The top four teams in each division will qualify to participate in the National Golden Gloves Championship.

The first three levels are knockout rounds.

The fourth level is the finals, where boxers from the four divisions compete for the top three places, with the champion receiving the Golden Gloves trophy.

The competition will be held between June 3rd and June 12th.

The finals will be held at the American Airlines Arena in Miami.

Link didn't need to leave Miami to compete.

This is good news.

(End of this chapter)