Boxing as in life can be full of cruel jokes sometimes.

Picture yourself as a young boxer in the ring named Rocky Juarez. You have just fought twelve grueling with Marco Antonio Barrera, one of the sport’s legends, clad in a stars and stripes boxing shorts reminiscent of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. You’ve bloodied the defending champion’s nose, and turned the left side of his face puffy. Personally you felt you’ve done enough to win. After all, you were unscathed and the wily champion wasn’t able to impose his will on you.

Before the verdict was out, a lot of things played inside your head. Images of things past. How excited you were, how hard you trained for this shot at glory. Now you believe everything’s come to fruition. This is it. This is the culmination of your hardwork, your training. This is the realization of your dreams. In your mind’s eye, you have just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

The ring announcer then comes on stage bringing with him an insignificant piece of paper. But to you, that paper is your passport, your ticket to fortune. As he starts to read the contents of the paper, you can’t make out a single thing. There were words coming out his mouth but they seem incomprehensible. Everything he said was gibberish. You only managed to catch three words. Barrera, Juarez, 114-114. A draw.

After twelve rounds of eating and dishing out leather. The judges scored your fight a draw. You’re stunned. Everything seemed to stop. You felt dizzy.

Then the blinding lights and the shouts of the crowd forced you back to consciousness. The bright sunlight of reality roaringly hit home.

“This is California,” you told the person shoving a microphone in your face, “this is the hometown of the champion,” you say, “a draw here is almost synonymous to a win. I definitely felt I did enough to win.” And you truly believed what you said. Getting a draw with a boxer who is a shoo-in for the International Boxing Hall of Fame, can only raise your stock and get you bigger fights. All is well you thought.

You step out of the ring a bit disappointed but content with the results. The darkness that enveloped you earlier has turned into a grayish pale. You got what you came here for. Or so you thought.

A couple of minutes after. There was a retabulation of the judges’ scorecards. It seems there was an error in the calculation. Instead of the 114-114 score, the tabulators determined that it should have been 115-114 in favor of Barrera. There was no split draw. You lost. After the announcer had the world, including you, believing that the fight was a draw, it was ruled as a mistake and that you actually lost. That was the unkindest cut of all.

Oh well, time to watch Naruto Shippuden Episodes.

Photo from HBO Boxing