Of Paunch and Punches: Boxing in Ukraine
by Paul Shields
It was a late summer evening in Kyiv when Yuriy, my 80-year-old boxing trainer, punched me in the mouth. “Hands up!” He continued to drive jabs to my head before charging an upper cut to my belly.
I considered a left-hook to his ribs, a counter to the shameless pounding. Yet there is an untouchable quality to those leathery trainers who somehow, over the years, magically shrink to the size of prunes. All I could do was stoically absorb my beating from this Ukrainian grandpa.
Eventually Yuriy stopped his onslaught, and I slouched over, my chest heaving for air. I lifted a glove toward the ring. Lit in an angelic light, two students sparred with impeccable technique. They were graceful, weaving a tapestry of sport between the ropes, taping each other as they sprung around the canvas. The only sounds across the gym were a ruffle of feet and the occasional smack of a leather glove finding its target.
“Am I ready?” I asked. I had been training for months and wondered whether I would be put in the ring at last.
It all started on an April morning in 2018 in the outskirts of Kyiv, where I lived with my girlfriend. I was shuffling to my job as an analyst for an international NGO, coffee spilling in hand, when I stumbled upon the faint outline of a boxer, drawn with white chalk on the sidewalk. Below was a number, hardly legible. From sheer impulse I called.
“What?”, barked a feisty voice.
“Do you boxing workout boxers for them?” My Russian was horrible. So I said something to that effect.
“We don’t work out.”
My heart sank. It’s strange to think, but as I got older I wanted to get into a fight. I wanted to be thrown into combat. I might not have looked like it at the time. I was twenty-something, bookish, and wore those glasses European bureaucrats all seem to have.
But the desire was real. It might have been from just living in Ukraine, a country enduring a four-year frozen war on its eastern front. Or it might have been this region’s culture of fitness with its pull up bars in every home and in every playground. Or it might have also been the gruff countenance in local interaction where, it seems, all Ukrainian men develop a martial hyper-masculine strut. Boys get it here around 8 years old. All I knew is I wanted to brawl.
After a pause there was a snort through the phone. “We don’t work out,” the voice said again. “We train.” He invited me to his gym that evening.
At 6 p.m. we ran. The unusually warm spring sun hissed overhead, dipping behind the Soviet-era high rises. Two dozen men huffed laps around a pot-holed track. It was a scene of sneakers, Adidas stripes, and people grunting pizdets (fuck) trying to keep pace. By the second mile we strung out in groups, and I struggled towards the back, getting lapped by those more fit.
Another straggler ran on my heels, hinged at the waist, his gut drooping in a testament to gravity. A few stringy hairs clung wildly to a bald head. His name was Anton. He had a constant look of bemused confusion, sort of like a bushbaby.
By the time we finished most gathered in clusters and conferred in whispers about Lomachenko, Usyk, and the Klitschko brothers; the heroes of Ukraine’s boxing pantheon. By the mid-2010s, Ukraine was experiencing a surge in boxing popularity thanks to its success in the sport.
Consider the twin Klitschko brothers, Vladimir and Vitalli, who dominated the heavyweight scene from 2008-2012. We never knew which twin was better (nor which one was fighting really since they have such similar names and faces), as they promised their mom to never fight each other. There was a boring sweetness to them. In the ring they developed a brilliant-in-the-basics style. In interviews, they had an almost mouse-like reservation. Vitalli later became the mayor of Kyiv and installed orange pull up bars all around the city.
Then there is Lomachenko. Lomo. Loman. Lo. The man who made footwork a new discipline for the boxing community thanks to years of training in Ukrainian folk dancing. His father, a boxing trainer, groomed his son to simultaneously hook and jab while twirling on his tiptoes to Balalaika tunes. It seemed to pay off. His swift and sturdy legs give him perfect balance. He strikes his opponents from inventive angles driving them toward insanity. Many have quit mid-fight out of frustration. Lomachenko earned the title, “The Matrix,” for his seeming ability to be in multiple places at the same time.
It’s puzzling why Ukraine, a prior little-known country with 40 million, excels in fighting. Part of me thinks the harsh realities of life here have something to do with it. A history of strife, poverty, genocide, and rampant political instability may have nurtured a microcosm for boxing. Indeed, all around the world, fighting has always been a passageway out of deprivation. All great boxers seemed to punch their way through dire circumstances, using their fists to carve a life in the ring. Ukrainians are great fighters because they have been fighting their whole life.
Yet I knew none of these men would ever reach the levels of the Klitschko or Lomachenko. We were a dusty bunch. Many of us were past their prime store clerks, construction workers, and truck drivers. One of the more athletic ones sold cell phones in kiosks around town and promised me a good deal on an iPhone. I was an Asian American abroad with a vague longing for adventure. No one here was a champion. But these men strove to be a part of their hometown heroes, or at least have a piece of them that perhaps they felt they lacked.
And that’s when the man on the phone appeared. He led us on a jog down a set of stairs to the murky depths of the capital. In his basement gym it smelled of mildew, rust, and a middle-school locker room. Heavy bags hung like sacks of onions under fluorescent lights. Chess boards sat staged on the side of the wall. In the center was the ring.
Yuriy was a peanut of a man. A raisin with limbs in tattered shorts. There was not an ounce of fat on him. Boxing seemed etched into his soul and radiated off his bones. He led us through a series of mobility and conditioning exercises. Ten minutes of jump rope. Duck walks, swinging arms, high knees, windmills, butt kicks, trunk rotations.
That first day, I was spent from running. My shirt clung to my body, drenched in sweat. Through all my panting and grimacing, my right glute seized into a knot. Yuriy spoke in a mix of Ukrainian and Russian called Suzhik, which left me stumbling, swiveling my head around, trying to copy others’ movements. I was a mediocre varsity athlete in high school, but that was long ago. My attempt to appear smooth and confident was beaten by age and too many emails.
It’s hard to describe what happened when we switched to technique. But it reminded me of a Soviet ballet class. We staged along a wall length mirror, and Yuriy called out punch combinations. We repeated in unison. Jab -Cross-Jab. Jab-Cross-Hook. We moved excruciatingly slow, bouncing on our toes while correcting our delicate movements. Yuriy wanted accuracy over speed. Precision over power. Grace over strength. More experienced students moved like well-oiled machines.
We shadow-boxed forever. Maybe 40 minutes. I couldn’t tell. Anton and I flung our fists in the air at some invisible enemy.
“My God,” Yuriy breathed in horror. He still demanded perfection from the two of us, shrieking something in Ukrainian before kicking my feet for being off half-an-inch.
Finally, he separated us into groups. Some students put in mouth guards and took the cue to spar, experimenting with the techniques we practiced. Yuriy picked a pair to enter the ring. Others took to the heavy bags for six rounds.
Yuriy grabbed Anton and I by the gruff of our necks and dropped us in a corner. He made us practice our jab again, the most basic and fundamental punch. Yuriy held out a piece of white paper for us to hit. Yet no matter how deliberate we jabbed Yuriy screamed, “Slower! Softer! Focus! Like this!” Anton tried to punch a bag, but Yuriy slapped his bald head.
Eventually Yuriy pulled me aside. “You don’t have any idea what I am saying. Do you?”
I squinted through my fogged-up glasses and pressed my lips together. I didn’t know how to respond.
Yuriy then stepped forward and punched my chest. He watched my eyes. He did it again. Each punch unleashed lightning through my body. It woke something deep within. And it left me dazed yet alert, weak yet strong, and in the kind of intense focus where time slips from its bounds.
The next morning, I limped out of bed and into the kitchen, my knees cracking like peanuts being crushed from a shell. My shoulders were sore to the point of being unusable, the coffee pot threatening to take me to the ground. My girlfriend helped me put on my coat and I dragged myself to work where I sagged deeply (and I mean deeply) into a chair, sliding lower and making the sound of a deflating beach ball.
Before leaving the gym yesterday, Yuriy asked whether I would be coming back tomorrow. “I might even let you spar,” he said walking away.
Great boxing trainers can read people like books. They are psychological masters. Perhaps even manipulators. They have to be. Because saying the right words can win a fight or change someone’s life.
Yuriy knew that I needed to get punched. He saw that I had never been in a real fight where my physical being and pride were at stake. I felt he was challenging me to return, almost a dare, to see what I would do.
I hobbled to the gym on my second day, late, yet determined and caught up with the others circling the track. Anton was there too, looking especially haggard, a slight gimp in his leg. We lumbered in circles and never spoke. A tension simmered between us.
We spent the majority of my time in the mirror, as Yuriy insisted, again, on moving at a grinding snail’s pace. It was frustrating, but I started to see the small details of boxing that I passed over before. It was about being loose. Arms like chains. Rhythm in the feet. A dance of violence. Power comes from the floor and shoots up your leg. Twist your hips and launch a punch like a piston from your torso.
Yuriy kept his promise and let me spar with an advanced student. His name was Sasha, and he was patient with me. Sparring is controlled yet intoxicating. It happens at 50 percent speed, so there was no chance of real injury, but we still got reps against a moving target. Sasha’s snappy punches to the face stung, but I understood the logic: it introduced the idea of having a challenger, a competitor to strive against. Bags and shadowboxing don’t hit back, or move, or come close to a real fight.
It took a month for the soreness to disappear, but by then I was a full-on addict. I was showing up after work almost every day, brain dead from making Powerpoints and reports. I would clamber to the gym and change before scuttling around the track with the others. We spared daily.
Yuriy never put me in the ring though. That was reserved for a real fight where you practice going all out. I gathered one had to earn time in the four-cornered arena. Though I didn’t know how. Anton didn’t seem to get the ticket either. We just kept practicing in the mirror.
One Sunday afternoon Maria, my girlfriend, caught me practicing combinations in the bathroom mirror. “Where is this going?” She leaned against the doorway.
“Where is what going?” I kept striking the air.
“This” She pointed at me. “Like you want to be a boxer now? That’s all you do.” She looked concerned, if not irritated.
I was getting more invested in boxing, and it became all consuming. Most evenings, I would slip in quietly through my apartment door. The place would be dark. A single light in the kitchen cast on a cold dinner. Training sessions led to late nights and on some mornings, I would gingerly wake up at five and get some more before work. I watched boxing matches during my lunch break. It’s all I wanted to talk about.
Where was this going? What was I after? Did any of it matter? It was clearly having a negative effect on my life. My performance at work slowed, my thinking foggier now that I was frequently getting jabbed in the head, my face bruised, before morning meetings. Moreover, I wasn’t focused on the internal politics of Ukraine, which I was supposed to do. I was dreaming about the next time I would be in front of a speed bag. I was dreaming about fighting.
Then one Tuesday evening it happened. Yuriy pointed at Anton then looked at me. “It’s time.”
The gym cheered. A growing circle crowded the canvas. Everyone had been waiting for this. Bout of the bottom. War of the worst. Sparring for suckers. It would be short: three rounds at two minutes each. I pushed through the throng of onlookers and slipped through the ropes. Under the lights, I could not have been happier or more terrified.
Anton stood across from me, bouncing on his toes. He ripped the Velcro straps from his gloves, tightening them around his wrists. He looked different from when we first met. Anton now embraced balding; his dome well-shaved. He was still heavy but had tanned over the summer. The fat around his face and neck disappeared.
I realized then why I never liked him. I saw myself in Anton. And I wanted to clobber him, believing that I could somehow beat the weakness I was so afraid of out of myself.
As I hopped around my corner, focusing on keeping the tension out of my back, I cracked my neck. I felt my heart beat against my ribs. I thought it strange to be here, in the boxing ring, in Ukraine, given I was once averse towards fighting. My father was a pacifist of sorts, instructing my brothers and I to be like a bear in a conflict, and walk away. As a result I became a nerd, a library dweller of sorts. I took up running and swimming as a child, grabbing onto the cerebral nature of repetitive action.
Now that I have a son of my own I know my father is right. Violence should only be used for self-defense and the defense of others. Though something felt off. Like celebrating Christmas in Arizona. And I felt this when working a job that slowly turned my back into a question mark. And it hit home when I looked in the mirror in the morning and saw through my smudged spectacles my body transforming into the shape of a pear.
I am not sure if I won or lost. Probably both. All I know is that when the punches fly, when the adrenaline pounds, and when people scream at you in Ukrainian, you feel everything. You feel a Tolstoy novel rip through you. Hate. Love. Courage. Honor. Humiliation. Shame. Satisfaction. Always and never ready.
Fighting, I found in that moment, is instructive because it reveals. It helps you understand yourself. It makes you come to grips with who you really are. Because in the ring you are completely alone. No one can save you but yourself. You cannot ride alongside Tom Brady or Michael Jordan and come home with a ring. Rather you think: Am I a coward? Can I take this pain? Can I keep going? It’s daunting. Whatever you have in the boxing ring is yours. It’s you in an almost pure form. This is my body, and this is my life, with all its problems and quirks. And though not perfect I must try my best.
The gym supported Anton and me, barking on the sidelines and slapping our backs. They gave us water at the breaks that gushed out of my mouth and onto my shirt. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to cry from the pain and the joy of it all. I hit. I got hit. I dodged. I swung. I clinched. I fought.
Anton and I tapped our gloves afterward. He sputtered “good job” before stumbling to his corner and flinging his body against the ropes like a beached whale. Yuriy said nothing. Though he dipped his head a quarter of an inch towards me, his nod of approval.
After the fight I walked home through the evening streets of Kyiv where it’s drab and dusty and beaming with potential. The late summer sun painted bars of pink and orange over the skyline. I remember looking forward to holding my girlfriend and eating watermelon together on our balcony. I remember thinking I didn’t want to fight again like that unless I had to, though it was right to fight here and now. I remember thinking how boxing is fair. Where you start in life is not. Who your parents are is not. But boxing is. And for that reason it dramatizes the redemption we are all chasing.
Paul Shields is a logistics officer in the United States Marine Corps. A Fulbright Scholar, he graduated with a Master of Philosophy degree from Oxford University and completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University. His writing on travel and culture around the former Soviet Union has appeared in online and print publications. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two sons.