He’s one of those people who was put here for a single purpose. Ask him anything not fight or training-related, and chances are he’s not going to have a clue what you’re talking about. Bring up a topic in his wheelhouse, though, and he’s the smartest guy in any room.
For now, there are a couple of guys in the ring, so we wait.
“What’s the word on the next fight?” I ask.
Logan smiles with half his mouth. “You’re going to have your work cut out for you,” he says.
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“Have you ever heard the name Mitch Furyk?” he asks.
Yeah, I’ve heard the name. “He’s next?” I ask.
“That’s good,” Logan says. “You’re confident. Still, I’d start hoping you catch a second wind or something, because if what you brought in here today is what you bring to the fight, we’re going to have to scrape you off the ground with a pancake turner.”
“Spatula,” I correct.
“No,” Logan says. “I mean a pancake turner.”
I’m not nearly interested enough to argue. Even if I wasn’t in a particularly bad mood today, I still don’t think I’d care.
“Mitch the Fury, huh?” I ask. “Wasn’t he doing flyweight for a while?”
“Yeah,” Logan answers, glancing up as one of the guys in the ring gets staggered by a hard right. “He was flyweight for about a year. Before that, he was all the way up at welterweight for a couple of years until he decided to go vegan and lost a ton of weight. Word on the street is that he packed on the extra twenty pounds because he heard you were in on this thing and he wanted the pleasure of putting your head through the floor.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’m all he thinks about,” I mock.
The guys in the ring finally call it quits and Logan and I get our gloves and headgear on and cinched.
“He should be all that you’re thinking about,” Logan says.
“Given that I just found out who I’m up against, I’d say it’d be pretty hard for me to retroactively obsess about him,” I answer, ducking my head as I step into the ring.
“Yeah, I don’t know what any of that means,” Logan starts, “but you’ve got to get your head back, man. One of the things that always made you a good fighter was that you knew when to strike and when to save your energy. You waste an ounce trying to be the big freak in the ring and me and your girlfriend are going to be taking turns feeding you through a straw.”
“Her name’s Ash,” I tell Logan, though I’m not sure why I bother. It’s not just math he can only do with a fighting corollary; it’s pretty much everything.
“Whatever,” Logan says. “You ready? Are we doing this Rocky Two style or do you actually want to have someone start us off?”
I’d feel better about the punch I just threw as an answer if he didn’t easily duck it and start laughing loudly enough to draw the attention of most of the gym.
“You’re a prick,” I tell him.
“And you’ve got a fight to train for,” he says. “Now quit throwing half-assed crap and hit me.”
The last word’s not fully out of his mouth before a punch I swear I didn’t even see rocks me back a little.
Okay, different weight class or no, this isn’t going well.
“What are you doing?” Logan taunts. “You acted like you didn’t even know it was coming.”
He throws a left hand, followed up quickly with a right knee. I manage to dodge the strikes, but when I go to counter, Logan’s prepared.
This is Logan’s play time, though he likes to call it “giving back to the community.” That’s condescending enough, but he likes to have people witness his generosity.
What that means for me is that I’ve got until people start crowding around to watch us spar to put Logan into the mat. Once he has an audience, he tends to become a bit of a showman and it’s absolutely infuriating.
I give him a shin kick just above his right knee, but I may as well be kicking a lamppost. He actually smiles at me as he glances down toward where the blow had landed.