newsmedia asked 6 months ago
Photo by BabaSteve Media.
A month before his fourth knockout win in as many fights, we’re swimming 500 meters. It’s barely spring in Atlanta and we’re doing what qualifies as a recovery swim for Reese. “How long are we swimming? I ask hoping for a time, “500 meters” he says with a grin.
By the time we swim 20 laps in a 25-meter pool, I feel lucky to not have drowned and Reese looks like he just got back to the couch after grabbing a snack from the fridge.
Our workouts always start with an impromptu text. Most commonly:
“Tonight?” or “Swim?”
A “swim?” text is as unpredictable as spring in Atlanta, and like the pollen spring brings, swimming with Reese also makes it hard to breathe.
Post swim. Photo by author.
A “tonight?” text on Sunday morning is shorthand for: “Do you want to do a workout that will make you want to throw up at 8 PM in an empty gym?”. The answer is always yes from both sides.
Whoever gets to the gym speaker first controls the music, from pre-2010 reggaeton to the braggadocio’s opulence of Watch the Throne. Anything that raises testosterone is fair game.
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Not long after 8 PM, we warm-up, followed by grappling drills and live rounds, then conditioning to finish. Because the overlap in our skillsets is in grappling, where I actively compete in jiu-jitsu and MMA requires a big focus on the same, the focus of the workout is always grappling.
We make an exception on the Sunday a week before the fight, where I chase him around the gym in a bad southpaw stance, imitating his opponent as he goes through the motions of the same brutal strikes he would use to win a week later.
A month after that swim workout, I’m backstage with Reese waiting for when it’s time for him to make the walk. In two hours he’ll fight for the fourth time as a professional against his also undefeated opponent. Yet still a few hours away, the tension is hardly palpable.
He’s won his first three fights by brutal knockout. I watched those on my phone far away from where they took place, this is the first one I’m attending live.
I’m eating a bag of granola I stole from Reese’s pre-fight snack stash to help kill time and hunger when he looks over and says, “Get up we’re taking a picture”.
I know what’s happening because on a Sunday in October of last year, Reese walked into the gym holding an American flag above his head.