Chapter 11 Golden Gloves Championship

Bang!

In the boxing ring, Link and Mario continued to train.

With Mario's cooperation, he kept changing his attack methods, jabs, straight punches, left hooks, uppercuts, and throws.

He used to be small and was best at jabs. Jabs are fast and unexpected, not as fast as straight punches and swings, but by quickly hitting the effective parts of the opponent's body, he can win by points.

Now he is taller and heavier, his strength is also increasing, and his arms are much longer than before, so some adjustments need to be made to his attack methods.

On the premise of ensuring that the jab attack is still sharp, he is also consciously strengthening the training of straight punches, swings, hooks, and throws.

In combination punches, more straight punches and swings that cause more damage should be used, so that one punch can win at a critical moment.

After practicing for more than an hour, both of them were sweating.

The weather in Miami is relatively humid, and the room needs to be ventilated to feel refreshed.

The ventilation facilities in the boxing gym are very complete, but the amount of exercise is too much, the clothes are wet and dry, dry and wet, and a layer of sweat alkali condenses on the T-shirt.

After a short rest, he began to spar with Mario.

Mario focuses on attacking, and he focuses on defense.

For a boxer, offense and defense are equally important. The boxer who does well on both offense and defense will survive longer in the professional boxing world.

In the past thirty years, Tyson is undoubtedly the best boxer on the offensive end.

Tyson has a strong offensive ability, always moving forward and never retreating. His boxing moves are clean, fierce, wild, and highly entertaining. He is also considered the most offensive boxer in the history of world professional boxing.

Tyson's old rival Evander Holyfield did well on the defensive end.

Although Holyfield is also a power boxer, his defensive skills are also extremely superb.

In the two WBA gold belt defense matches in 1996 and 1997, Holyfield defeated Tyson twice in a row with a strong defensive counterattack tactic, forcing Tyson to bite his ear.

Link is a power boxer, but he is not sure whether he can deal with those professional boxers with strength alone after switching to professional boxing.

For safety reasons, he plans to do both offense and defense well and make himself a hexagonal fighter without weaknesses.

"Hey! Link, Mario, don't practice yet, Coach West brought back a good thing."

While the two were training, Reggie, a boxer from the same gym, ran over excitedly and shouted.

"What is it?"

Link and Mario stopped and jumped off the boxing ring.

The three of them came to the training area together. West, manager Robinson and apprentices were all here. Everyone was watching around a rectangular machine more than two meters high.

"Wow! It's a punch weight tester!"

Mario shouted exaggeratedly, pushed the crowd away, rushed to the tester excitedly, fumbled around, and looked back at Coach West with a strange look on his face.

"West, I advised you to buy one a long time ago. I advised you dozens of times but you didn't buy it. Why did you buy it now? Wait, is it because of Link?"

Mario sat on the ground with a resentful tone, "West, I advised you dozens of times but you didn't buy it. The day after Link came, you moved the machine to the boxing gym. Your attitude of discriminating is too obvious. You are discriminating, naked discrimination, do you understand?"

West glared at him with a dark face and said, "I bought it a long time ago, but it was only delivered today."

"Do you think I will believe it? It was delivered to my door as soon as Link came. Does the machine manufacturer know that a genius has come to our boxing gym and urgently needs this machine for training?"

Mario teased angrily.

Manager Robinson said with a smile: "Mario, this is true. The punching force test machine manufacturer is in Nevada. If it was bought yesterday, it would definitely not be delivered today."

"Huh, it seems so."

Mario and others accepted this explanation and felt much more comfortable.

West and Robinson looked at each other and smiled knowingly.

This machine was bought a long time ago, but the boxing gym was not doing well, so they were too lazy to put it out for Mario and others to fight randomly, but it was different when Link came.

Link is a boxer with great potential. As long as they can help Link in training, they don't mind investing more.

"Get out of the way, let me test how heavy my punch is."

Mario pushed aside a few apprentices who were watching the fun, clenched his fist as big as a sandbag, roared, and hit the test target of the test machine hard.

Bang!

The test target was retracted, and the numbers on the screen began to jump, quickly rolling from 100 pounds to 700 pounds, and finally stopped at the integer value of 780 pounds.

"780 pounds? Haha, Link, you come and test it too."

Mario called out.

Link waved his hand and asked Reggie and the other four to test first. He wanted to see if the test machine was accurate.

Reggie and the other four boxers lined up to test. Except for Reggie who hit 620 pounds, the scores of the other three were all over 500.

"Link, it's your turn, hit it quickly."

Mario urged.

Link put down his notebook, stood in front of the test machine, clenched his right fist, and hit the target hard. The values ​​on the screen were flipping rapidly, and everyone stared at the screen with wide eyes.

Seeing the data break through 1000 pounds, everyone shouted in surprise, and finally Link's punch weight stabilized at 1430 pounds.

"Wow, 1430 pounds, I heard that Tyson could only hit 1800 pounds in his peak period, and Holyfield 1600 pounds, Link is about to catch up with them."

Mario exclaimed.

"No, no, Link is a middleweight, Tyson and the others are heavyweights, a middleweight's punch is almost as heavy as a heavyweight champion, it's amazing."

Reggie looked at Link with admiration.

The other boxers and apprentices looked at Link with worshipful eyes, as if a boxing champion was around.

Link smiled lightly, the punching force tester can only estimate the value of the boxer's punch at the moment of punching, it is an estimate, not the real 1400 pounds.

In addition, in boxing matches, the opponent is a living person, who will move, dodge and block, and will not wait for others to attack like a dummy.

If you want to hit the opponent with a 1400-pound fist, you need certain skills.

The KO (knock out) that occurs in the boxing ring is mostly caused by not defending against the opponent's heavy punches and being hit directly in the head, resulting in fainting.

This is also the reason why the boxing world attaches great importance to the KO probability. The more times a boxer KOs his opponents, it means that he is strong and has good skills.

Although the data measured by this machine is not very accurate, it is a good measuring tool.

His strength is slowly increasing during training. With this machine, he can more accurately understand his own growth and formulate corresponding training plans.

"West, I'm going to test it a few more times to see what the average is."

Link said.

"Okay."

West took a notebook and began to record the test.

On the punch weight tester, Link punched 10 times in a row within three minutes. The best result of the right punch was 1480 pounds in the third time, and the worst was 1130 pounds in the ninth time, with an average of 1350 pounds.

The best result of the left hand was 1310 pounds, the worst result was 880 pounds, and the average was 1020 pounds, which was quite different from the right hand.

That is to say, he punched ten punches in a row on the boxing ring, and the weight of the right fist could be kept above 1100 pounds, and the weight of the left fist could be kept above 1000 pounds.

If one of these ten punches hits the opponent's head, the opponent will be KOed.

With Link's speed and skills, the probability of missing all ten punches is too small, and the probability of him knocking out his opponent in future competitions will be extremely high.

Link took the notebook and looked at it, remembering a few main data, and will test it once a month in the future to see how much progress he has made.

"Link, I want to test it too, you help me remember it."

Mario said noisily.

"Let's get started."

Mario took a deep breath, roared, bang bang bang.

He also hit the test machine 10 times in a row.

It was earth-shattering when he hit, but the measured data was not ideal.

The best result was 810 pounds, the worst result was 420 pounds, and the average was less than 600. This data is not bad for amateur competitions, and the appearance fee for professional competitions will never exceed 1,000.

"Why is there such a big difference?"

Mario looked at Link jealously, the average was less than half of Link's, which was equivalent to two of him added together equaling Link.

"I was born strong, you don't have to be too envious."

Link smiled.

Mario was even more envious after hearing this. "Born" means that you can't practice it even if you want to, just like a person telling a monkey that he is born smart. Link, this bastard, is too discouraging.

"Don't be envious. Practice more and you will catch up with Link one day."

Coach West said to the others, "You continue to test and remember to close the test. Link, let's go to the office to talk."

"Okay!"

Link nodded and followed Coach West to the office.

Standing in front of the French window in West's office, you can see the Miami Zoo and Botanical Garden opposite, which has a good environment.

"Link, take a look at this."

Coach West handed over a document.

It is the application form for the American Golden Gloves Championship.

The Golden Gloves Championship is the highest-level amateur boxing competition in the United States. It is one of the three major amateur boxing events along with the National Amateur Boxing Championship and the National Olympic Boxing Trials.

The importance of the Golden Gloves Championship is, to some extent, stronger than the latter two.

Famous boxing champions including Ali, Tyson, Joe Louis, George Foreman, etc., all achieved excellent results in the Golden Gloves Championship before switching to the professional boxing arena.

The Golden Gloves Championship is also considered to be the only way for young American boxers to enter the professional boxing world.

This is a good platform.

"Link, this year's Golden Gloves Championship will start in early June, and there are still ten days left. If you want to become famous early, this is a good opportunity."

West said.

Link nodded his chin, took out a pen, and began to fill in the registration materials.

Participants in the Golden Gloves Championship must be American citizens, aged between 18 and 39, and non-professional boxers.

There are four levels of competition.

The first level is the local area. All registered players will compete in the city first, and the top three in the city will participate in the state championship.

The state championship is the second level.

The third level is the divisional competition. The top four in the four divisions of the Eastern Division, Southeast Division, Northwest Division, and Central Division are qualified to participate in the National Golden Gloves Championship.

The first three levels are knockout rounds.

The fourth level is the finals. Boxers from the four divisions compete for the top three, and the champion will receive the Golden Gloves trophy.

The competition time is between June 3 and June 12.

The finals will be held at the American Airlines Arena in Miami.

Link doesn't need to leave Miami to participate in the game.

This is good news.