My first fight: Miguel Torres
As Torres was warming up backstage, one of his coaches stretched him out while attempting to impart various Eastern philosophies….
As Torres was warming up backstage, one of his coaches stretched him out while attempting to impart various Eastern philosophies. Ebb and flow. Yin and yang. That sort of stuff. His boxing coach had different advice, and it involved “[expletive]ing this guy up” and then befriending the strippers who’d been hired to serve as ring girls. Only maybe it wasn’t quite so delicately put.
“That was the last thing I heard before I went in there. And in my mind I had this idea of what a fight should be, just this war. I had images of me hitting him and him hurting me and me getting cut and bleeding, but coming back and winning the fight. Like a Rocky movie or a kung fu movie. I thought the whole 15-minute fight would be like that. I was thinking of all the Bruce Lee books I’d read, The Art of War. All that.”
Instead what happened was that Pulliam came forward, was backed off by a Torres head kick attempt — “the worst kick you can imagine,” he says — and then came forward again, straight into a Torres left hook. That was all it took. Pulliam went down, attempted to get back to his feet, then collapsed again. The ref had no choice but to stop it.
“I looked at my corner like, that’s it?” Torres says. “I didn’t want to get out of the ring. I was so upset. I wanted to fight again.”
