By Steve Janoski
When 22-year-old Sean Cogavin straps on the headgear, puts in his mouthpiece, and steps between the ring ropes, he's all in — full bore, no letting up.
Round after round the young Pequannock resident goes, bobbing, weaving, ducking and hooking, always preferring to spar only the toughest, most experienced opponents at Aces Boxing Club inBoonton. When he steps out, his eye is blackened and his nose faces a little further west, but he has no complaints.
Just a few weeks later, and he's already had two bouts across the Hudson after only four months in the gym, and he's given club owner and coach Joe Zabry the green light to put him on as many cards as possible. Put plainly, he loves to fight.
His personality outside of the ring is a sharp departure from his rough ring manners, however. Standing a lean 6 feet tall, he is exceedingly polite and affable, the kind of guy every trainer wants in his gym.
Once the bell rings, though, that mood changes, and there's no doubt that as he looks out the window of the sweltering third-floor gym on a Sunday afternoon, the tattooed, gray-eyed fighter is ready for his New Jersey debut and hopes to notch his first victory in front of a crowd of family and friends this Friday night.
He gets asked questions about why he picked this sport all the time, but he doesn't expect those who've never fought to understand.
"You don't realize it until you step in the ring and you actually move with somebody and yeah, you take a few hits you give a few hits…but it's therapy, you know what I mean?" he said.
And reflecting on his short but intense amateur career, the Lincoln Tech graduate said that boxing has become an escape from the daily grind of working in the labor-intensive HVAC field, one that he approaches with a blue-collar attitude that involves few words, lots of sweat, and a little blood.
He's found it's a different game than basketball, which he played during his four years at PequannockTownship High School, and the pressure of being alone in the ring, with no one to depend on when his lungs falter, is startling.
Family ties
One might say that the sport runs thick in his family's blood; besides an Irish cousin who fights overseas, his grandfather on his mother's side was a boxer in the Navy, while his father's father fought in the Marines. So maybe it was fate that the Ryan Lane resident, who always had heavy bags and speed bags in his home, found his way into Aces on the advice of a friend and to the chagrin of his mother, who never told him about the family hobby so as to not encourage him to take up the brutal pursuit.
Cogavin, however, called his mother "a trooper" who just greeted the notion of her son fighting with a shake of her head.
And that's what it's all about, after all — the fighting. Every workout, all the dieting, every minute of jumping rope and pad work, and endless miserable heavy bag drills, all aimed at performing flawlessly for just one night. Cogavin said the sport's rhythms are deceptively difficult, even for someone who prides himself on being in shape.
"Even that first day jumping rope, it just blows your mind….it's like, 'Damn, I can't even jump rope that good,'" he said.
When he does get in the ring, Cogavin fights in what historically could be called the Irish manner: in his zeal to exchange, his fists (and sometimes his face) lead the way.
"With a guy like Sean, you gotta hold him back enough to where he's not dangerous or a detriment to himself in that ring…you've got to save him from himself initially," said Coach Zabry, who is working on improving Cogavin's skills and patience.
However, the coach said that it can be difficult to rein in a born brawler's inherent recklessness, even when it's absolutely necessary, and teaching him, to use his height, footwork, and long arms to position an opponent before unleashing the lion is sometimes a struggle that can only be learned through experience.
"What Sean didn't realize is that it's easy to get into a fight, but it's not easy to win a boxing bout," he said. "Unfortunately, Sean is one of those hard-headed Irish kids that … you have to beat 'boxing' into."
In general though, a fighter's most important attributes are invisible to the naked eye, and Cogavin has two of the most crucial: the ability to take a punch (a "chin"), and a steadfast work ethic, both of which were on display last Saturday after a particularly bad loss in a Long Island bout.
"He took a beating, he felt like [expletive]," Zabry said. "But the next day, he was right back in the gym. And that says a lot about a boxer's character."
And the fighter looks at it the same way. Every bout is a lesson, no matter if he wins or loses. That's why he told Zabry that he wants rack up as many amateur fights as possible over the next year with an eye toward turning pro.
"Right now, man, I'll fight a guy that's 30-0. I'll fight anybody, 'cause it's only gonna make me better," he said.
Olympic dreams?
Cogavin admits he caught the Olympic buzz a bit and considered training for four more years in order to shoot for 2016, but his clock is ticking in a sport where a pugilist's "prime" is considered to be between the ages of 26 to 30. Right now, he's playing catch-up.
"I don't want to get beat up (in front of her). I don't want to get to where…every night I come home, she's like, 'Really? This is really what you're doing still?' So hopefully it's a blowout," he said with a laugh.
However, Zabry believes that the crowd will see a more cautious boxer instead of a face-first, Rocky-style southpaw brawler. Even if they don't, though, both coach and boxer know it will be just another lesson.
"Sean's one of these guy's that's just like, '[Expletive] it, let's fight. I'll fight everyone in front of me,'" Zabry said.
Full bore. As always.
For tickets, call Aces Boxing Club at 973-794-6509.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/165537906_Pequannock_resident_prepares_for_Friday_amateur_boxing_bout_boxing_is_in_his_family_s_blood_.html?page=all
No comments:
Post a Comment