Nobody Has Touched It

NOBODY HAS TOUCHED IT A Sparring Floor Observation, Filed to the Federation Record By Wesley Mark Halloran, Strength and Conditioning Coach, Halloran Combat Athletics, Birmingham ———————————————— [The federation's media intake received a second submission from W. M. Halloran, Mr. Graves's strength and conditioning coach of nine years. As with the first, Mr. Halloran filed on his own initiative with Mr. Graves's permission, and Mr. Graves did not read it before submission. The federation has published it as received.] ———————————————— It is me again. Wes Halloran. I have not filed since before the Kuramoto match. That was deliberate. I said what I had to say that week, Dorian lost the match the way I said he would lose it — correctly, in one direction — and then he lost another one, and I did not think either result needed a letter from his coach explaining it. A man who loses twice does not need his corner writing to the newspapers about him. I am writing now because something is going on in my gym that I do not like, and I have decided the audience is better off knowing than not. Dorian has permission. Dorian has not read it. That is the arrangement and neither of us has ever suggested changing it. ———————————————— I will start with the medical facts, because they are mine to give and because the federation site is where people go for them. The left shoulder has not healed. Kuramoto found it with the crossface and did what a man like that does, which is take exactly as much as the position offered and not one degree more. It should have been eight weeks. It has been considerably longer than eight weeks. It is not worse. It is not better. It has sat at about seventy per cent since and it has stopped moving in either direction. I know why. I want to be careful how I put this because I am fond of him and because it is going to sound like an accusation. He is not doing the rehab. He does the rest of it. He is in this building at six every morning with the thermos, the same as nine years, and I have never once had to ring him. He does the conditioning. He does the bag. He does the mat work. Then he gets to the band work for the left shoulder — eleven minutes, three times a week, I wrote the programme myself and it is not difficult — and he does about four minutes of it and finds something else that needs doing. I have raised it twice. The first time he said he would get to it. The second time he looked at me for a while and said, "It's fine. Nobody's going to go near it anyway." I did not have an answer for him that night and I have been chewing on it since. ———————————————— Here is what he meant. I want to lay it out properly because I do not think the audience saw what I saw. The Dlamini boy could have had that shoulder. Everybody in the building knew about it. The federation had published it. It was on the desk, it was in the previews, and Dorian went into that cage steering with the left side the whole match — never spending it, protecting it the way you protect a bad tyre on a long drive — and a twenty-four-year-old with the best leap in this company looked straight at it for fourteen minutes and would not put a hand on it. He beat Dorian anyway. Clean. I have no complaint about the result and neither does Dorian. But that lad decided, on the night, in front of everybody, that he did not need it. And then he was right. I have watched Dorian Graves take fifteen years of punishment across every hall and shed in this business and I have never seen anything hurt him like being spared. The one on the desk — Graves, the commentator, no relation, and I wish to God somebody would sort that out — said on air that Pryce would not have declined the shoulder. He meant it as a criticism of the boy. Dorian played that back four times. Four. He does not play anything back four times unless it is footage. I do not think he was angry at the commentator. I think it was the only sentence anyone said that week that treated him like a live problem. ———————————————— So, Cortez. I will be honest, I did not know much about the man before this. I have watched a good deal of him this week and I have formed a view, and the view is that he is a better fighter than his record and about four times louder than the situation calls for. He talks constantly. He files documents about himself. He has an opinion on everything and he says it in the tone of a man reading out a decision he has already handed down. My son says I only object because he is American. My son is not entirely wrong. But here is the thing I have realised about the booking, and I do not think the office did it by accident. Cortez will not spare him. Whatever else that man is, he is not going to walk into a cage against a fella with a bad left shoulder and decide to be gracious about it. He will go after it in the first ninety seconds and he will explain to eight thousand people why he is doing it while he does it. There will be no mercy in it and there will be no doubt about it afterwards. That is the first opponent in a long while who is going to treat Dorian Graves as a thing that needs solving rather than a thing that needs handling. And I think — and I have not said this to him and I am not going to — that is why the eleven minutes of band work keep turning into four. He is not neglecting it. He is leaving it out on the table on purpose to see whether anybody in this federation still wants it. ———————————————— Two other things I observed this week, filed for the record. The first is that the mirror work is back and it is not for Cortez. He shadow-worked Kuramoto's sequences before the Kuramoto match, which I wrote about at the time and said was new. He has been doing it again in the late afternoons and it is not Cortez's shape. It is somebody bigger. I have not asked. He shadow-works with his eyes half shut and I have learned not to interrupt it. The second I do not understand at all, so I will simply describe it. The federation put out that segment where Mr. Barr came out and ruled on how tag matches will run in that cage. No tagging, everybody in at once, one goes down and both have lost. I had it on in the office and did not think much of it. Dorian watched it twice. He does not watch segments. He watches matches, and only the ones he is in or about to be in. He stood in the office doorway with the coffee going cold in his hand and watched a man in work boots explain a rule change, and then he went and found it again on the laptop and watched it a second time, and the bit he rewound was the bit about your partner's failure being your failure. He did not say anything about it. He has not mentioned it since. I have known this man nine years. He has never had a faction, never had a manager, never had anybody stand next to him, and in nine years he has never once given me the impression that this bothered him. I am not saying it bothers him. I am saying he watched it twice. ———————————————— That is what the fortnight has looked like. I will close the way I closed the last one, since it seemed to go down all right. Behind Closed Doors 11 is going to look like a loud man and a quiet one, and the loud one is going to find the shoulder inside two minutes because it is the obvious thing to do and he is not stupid. What happens after that is the part I would watch. Because Dorian has been waiting a good while for somebody to want something off him badly enough to take it, and Mr. Cortez is about to oblige him, and I do not think Mr. Cortez has any idea what he is walking into the middle of. That is all I have to say. — Wes Halloran Halloran Combat Athletics Birmingham