The best guy you've shared a ring with.

Kirkland Laing. Now I have to stress, I was not a boxer, a martial artist yes, but not a boxer… but Kirk was my pal and this was simply a mess around amongst friends.

So here was I 6ft half an inch tall, 210 lbs with a jiu jits background, with delusions that I could be the next Mike Tyson!!…facing a mere WelterWeight boxer. Easy peasy! So Kirk once beat the great Duran…so what! I was gonna spread my little friend around that ring like butter on hot toast!

Anyway some rules applied…Kirk was not allowed to hit me too hard haha! Apart from that, normal rules applied.

Long story short, I ran out of steam chasing him around and hitting thin air. Kirk toyed with me for 3 minutes and to his credit, he deliberately didn’t connect with anything meaningful. He kept it friendly thank the lord!

 

I did my Erasmus in Malaga. Instead of going to university I went to the local boxing gym. I had sparred a couple of times at the University of North London against fellow uni students with middling success the previous year.

There was only one pro at the gym, Panamanian Edwin Murillo who was going to try and win back his WBC International welter belt from the man who had koed him Maxim Nesterenko. He sparred all the amateurs but me being a fat light-heavy he wanted me too.

I remember sparring with him three times, he nearly killed me with a body shot the first time but I got a little better and actually managed to land some jabs on him and even rough him up.

He beat Nesterenko on a eight rd technical decision. He then travelled to the Uk to fight Gary Jacobs. Jacobs was one of my favourite fighters, I told Edwin that all of Gary´s power was in his right hook. What happens? Edwin gets knocked out cold by a left hand.

Edwin became a journeyman after this but I read that he has his own gym now. He was best friends with Wilson Rodriguez, he introduced us and I had a beer with the man who a couple months before nearly beat Gatti. Gracias Edwin.

 

The clownage potential of facing even a half serious Mike Nunn would keep me a mile away.

 

A dude named Matt andrushko. He was a local heavyweight, weighed over 300 lbs. I was around 284 better shape than him. But he hit like a mule, knocked my boxing helmet off my head with a right hand. He never went pro or amateur but he got his weight down to 300, about -50 and I think he has an opportunity to be brought down to another state to help in training camp as a hw boxer / striker. They paid all his meals for him and he got to go on a trip. He's so far from the game nowadays that I too am just a channel surfer lol except my weight matches his weight now.

 

I've seen ranked fighters sparring:

Sheldon Hinton
Jason Adams
Helena mrnyovich

But never sparred em.