Chapter 13 State Championships

"Link, isn't this too high-profile? If your opponents notice it, they will study your fighting style, and your next game will become more difficult."

In the office on the third floor of the boxing gym, West looked through the game records and said with some concern.

Link won all three games by KOing his opponents, and his performance was extremely outstanding. After the regional competition, many people in the Miami boxing circle paid attention to him. This attention may be well-intentioned, but it will never lack malice. In order to protect Link, West decided to discuss it with Link.

"It doesn't matter. If you want to be famous, you can't do it without a price. I'm not afraid of being targeted."

Link shook his head. The purpose of doing this was to attract other people's attention.

Now is the Internet age, with advanced information and communication technology. The public can use the Internet to collect information from various platforms for free, which also makes the public's sight and attention easily distracted.

Like the Ali era and the Tyson era, they can get extremely high attention from the people and become popular boxing champions only by newspapers and television news dissemination.

Their matches will also be sought after by boxing fans, and they will get extremely high ticket revenue and PPV (pay per view) revenue, with each match earning tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. Ten million dollars in the 1960s and 1970s is comparable to 40 or 50 million in 2008.

Now he wants to become a popular boxing champion like Ali, Tyson, and Holyfield, and earn more dollars, so he must become famous and find ways to get more attention and discussion.

And in the game, killing the opponent as quickly as possible and showing strong strength is one of the ways he thought of.

"West, if there is an interview with the media, keep it secret for the time being, leave some suspense for the media and the public, and wait until the final to expose it, so that it can get more attention and topics." Link thought for a while and said.

West nodded. He has been in the boxing world for 30 or 40 years, knows a lot about the boxing circle, and can understand Link's approach and purpose.

There is no doubt that Link is right.

This also reminded him of when he debuted, his agent asked reporters to interview him and write a press release for him. He was not very willing to do so, thinking that boxers are not actors or singers, and boxers should speak with their fists, not those useless and false names.

He was too young and his ideas were too immature. In the boxing circle, fame is not only useful, but also crucial.

Suppose two boxers have the same strength but different fame. The more famous boxer gets a prize of 10 million US dollars per game, and the less famous boxer gets an appearance fee of 10,000 US dollars per game.

For the bonus, their strength in the boxing ring is definitely different, and the more famous boxer definitely performs better than usual.

When he was a challenger against WBO middleweight champion Sugar Ray Leonard, when the game started, tens of thousands of people in the audience cheered Sugar's name in unison and cheered for Sugar. Sugar easily gained the home advantage, while he played under pressure and finally performed poorly and lost to Sugar.

When he got old, West often thought of the past, thinking of the game at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. If there were tens of thousands of people cheering for him, could he win?

He felt that he had a great chance, at least he would not be knocked out by Sugar in the third round.

So now he was very pleased to see that Link knew how to use the media, create public opinion, promote himself, and attract public attention at the beginning of his debut.

"Link, you can focus on the competition. I will let Robinson arrange the media matters. He was my assistant and executive agent in the past and often dealt with the media. These things are not difficult for him."

"Okay!"

--

The schedule of the Golden Gloves Championship was very tight. After the regional competition, only one day later, Link, West, Mario, Reggie and others took the Silver Star train to Orlando to participate in the Golden Gloves State Championship Qualifiers.

Orlando is located in central Florida, more than 230 miles away from Miami. It is also a scenic tourist city. The more famous tourist attractions in the city include Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and Islands of Adventure.

This is also one of the filming locations of "Harry Potter". In Islands of Adventure, there are Harry Potter's Magical World, Hogwarts Castle, Hogsmeade Village, Magic Train and other tourist projects, which are more suitable for family travel.

The most famous team in Orlando is the Orlando Magic, one of the professional basketball teams in the NBA.

This year, the Magic performed mediocrely. Although they had Dwight Howard, the "Magic Beast", the Turkish power forward Hidayat Turkoglu, and Rashard Lewis, one of the "twin stars", they still lost to the Detroit Pistons in the divisional competition. They packed up and went home early, leaving the stadium to the boxers.

The Florida qualifiers for the Golden Gloves Championship were held at the Amway Arena, the main stadium of the Orlando Magic.

This stadium can accommodate 17,000 spectators. This game will also be open to the public. People can enter by buying tickets. The ticket price for out-of-town tourists is $15 per ticket, which is not expensive.

"Hey, do you know that I was a member of the school basketball team when I was in junior high school, and my basketball skills are very good."

In the lounge of the Amway Arena, Mario looked at the Magic team logo on the wall and said.

"Why don't you continue playing basketball? You're tall enough to play guard."

"Do you think I don't want to? I stopped growing when I was 6 feet 15 at the age of 18, and I became fatter and fatter. Later, I met West, and he said I was suitable for boxing, so I came here to practice boxing." Mario said, hugging the flesh on his belly.

Link was a little surprised when he saw him. This guy didn't lose any weight despite training every day. He was 208 pounds before and now is 210 pounds. The meat on his body is not pure fat, but fat and thin. It is much stronger than James' meat and is quite resistant to beatings. .

"I originally wanted to play baseball." Reggie scratched the blond hair on his head and said, "Then I watched Tyson's game and thought boxing was cooler, so I started practicing boxing."

"Where are you Link?" Mario asked.

Link thought for a moment and realized that he was originally a miner and there was no better choice than being a boxer.

Although being a boxer is hard and tiring, hitting sandbags with your fists every day, or getting beaten as a sparring partner, there is obviously more hope than working in a dark mine.

When I was in the mine, I was worried about going underground every day, drilling into a hole hundreds of meters deep, looking at the mine above my head, and I couldn't help but worry about being killed by a sudden falling stone, or being buried in the mine in the event of a mining accident. Deep down, not even the body could be found, and the family could not get compensation.

Those days were really dark.

For him, boxing was more like a beam of light and a life-saving straw in a dark life, so he did not give up until his death.

"Link?"

"I'm a diver, I have a diving license."

Link laughed.

"Cool! I'm going to dive with you after the game."

When the group walked into the home court of the Amway Arena, the state championships had already been held for half a day. The scene was divided into two match points. The left boxing ring held competitions above 70 kg, and the right ring held competitions below 70 kg.

More than two thousand spectators came to the scene, and the atmosphere was quite lively.

Currently, the boxing match on the left is a heavyweight (over 91 kg) boxing match. Two fat athletes are wearing boxing gloves and fighting on the stage. They are also wearing protective gear. The visual effect is average, and the reaction of the audience is also very dull. .

Mario is also a boxer at this level. Originally, West wanted him to reduce his weight and fight in the heavyweight competition. There were not many strong opponents at this level, but he couldn't lose weight at all and could only compete in the heavyweight competition.

After the match on the stage was over, Mario was inspected and walked onto the ring with his gloves. His opponent was also a Latino from Panama City in the northwest. He was 196 centimeters tall, with strong muscles and relatively long arms.

After the game started, after several trials, Mario's opponent took the lead in attacking, taking advantage of his arm length to hit Mario's face, chest, and abdomen.

In the first round, Mario was at a disadvantage, but he defended well and was not disrupted by his opponent.

In the second round, Mario counterattacked, hitting the opponent's chin with his fist and forcing the opponent into the corner.

"Mario, you took action too early."

At the end of the second round, West pulled Mario in the rest area and said, "Your advantage is defense. You should defend first and try to drag the game into the third round. First consume the opponent's strength and then take the initiative to attack."

"I understand, I know how to fight, West, don't worry, I will definitely win this one."

Mario said excitedly.

Bang!

In the third round, Mario continued to attack and hit his opponent in the face with a right punch. The opponent fell to the ground, causing quite a stir at the scene.

Today's match was generally exciting. As long as there was a KO on the stage, the audience would applaud.

In the fourth round, Mario knocked down his opponent again. His opponent reluctantly got up and persisted for one round. After being knocked down again in the sixth round, the referee ruled that Mario won.

"Roar!"

After Mario won by KO, he stood on the corner post, raised his fist in excitement, and shouted to the audience, who also gave him warm applause.

Link also clapped his hands.

"West, look, I won."

Mario shouted excitedly after stepping off the stage.

"You attack too early. If you attack later, you will win more smoothly and you can save your energy for the later games."

West commented.

Mario laughed, patted his belly and said: "West, I understand what you mean, but there is no need to do that. The opponent just now looked very strong and had long arms. I thought he was very powerful. Wait for him to fight." After a few punches, I realized that his fists were very light, as if he was tickling me. I thought, since he was so weak, there was no need to continue to consume him. I started to attack and knocked him down with one punch. It felt really great. ”

Mario pumped his fists and twitched his butt excitedly, like Teddy in the next seat.

"Mario, it's because you have been practicing with Link recently and your ability to resist blows has improved dramatically, so you feel that your opponent's punch is not heavy." Reggie said with a smile.

Mario chuckled, "Yes, compared to Link, that guy's fists are indeed not that good, but Link, if you hit me every day, don't think I will be grateful to you."

"No need, but you have to be careful. There are many strong people among heavyweight boxers."

"It doesn't matter. There are no experts in the Florida Division. I am confident that I will get a place to advance."

Mario said with great confidence.

West shook his head and pulled Mario to continue talking about tactics, asking him to follow the tactics in the next game and not to fight randomly. Mario kept nodding, but his eyes had already drifted to the buttocks of the female volunteer next to him.

——