Task Two Questions

Ø  What do you anticipate? Why: I anticipate running into tough or difficult questions to think of to ask because i dont want them to feel obligated to answer any personal questions.

Ø  What sort of problems do you think may arise for Task Two: I think it will be hard to find someone that is willing to put thier buisness out and talk about thier past. But once i do find someone that is willing to do so, i think im going to have a hard time conveying thier story, i dont want to downplay and/or over exaggerate thier life's story.

Ø  What sort of questions would you ask and why: I would first ask them about thier background and thier heritage (race, religon ect...). then i would ask them were they grew up and there surroundings such as thier community, schools, homelife, social life. After all that i would want to get in depth with the questions and ask them what thier goals were while growing up, how or if they had any impact on thier community or if thier community had any impact on them. and last i would want to know if they had accomplished thier life's goals or any personal goals while growing up and thoughout there life. I think all of those questions are very vital in an interviewing session because i want to interprete and convey the story in presis detail from begining to end.

Task One

Boxing has taken over my life since the first time I had stepped in a gym. I first started out boxing while in middle school about 11 years ago.  I can remember before I started how badly I wanted to fight. I would always have a lot of energy but I would never have anywhere to channel that energy until I started boxing. It was also a great stress reliever.

          I lived just one block over from my trainer Galen Brown. He was a few years older than me, so he was able to drive us back and fourth to the gym. I think I was 13 and I had been in the gym for 3 months and I was scheduled to fight in the West Bottoms in Kansas City, Mo. I was so scared because I did not want to get in there and look like a fool and lose my very first fight. It didn’t help my nerves any that I knew all my friends and my whole family was there to watch and support me. Plus I just didn’t want my opponent to think I was scared of him.

          My first amateur fight came and went without a glitch and I won my first amateur fight by knockout in just 8 seconds. I had three other fights as an amateur and went 3-1 with 2 knockouts as an amateur. Although I didn’t get the amateur career I would have liked to have or needed, so I would be properly prepared for my professional career, but that didn’t matter to me. I was just ready to get in the ring as a professional fight as soon as I could and start making money for it.

          As an amateur I had 4 fights in a 5 year period of time. At the age of 18 I turned pro and had my first fight in Jefferson City. I fought a Mexican kid that had already had over 100 amateur fights and was on his fifth pro fight. But at the end of the, fight I had lost by unanimous decision. That is where both fighters last until the end of the fight, so then it is up to the judges score cards to determine who won the fight. The judges score the fights on a 10 points scale, whoever wins the round gets 10 points and the loser gets 9, whoever has the most points at the end of the fight wins. It was after my first pro fight that I told myself that I was either going to either train like I should or I was going to give it up after my first fight. I chose to take it serious, so I started to train twice a day, six days a week. After that, it was like I did a complete 180. I would go on to win my next 9 fights and 7 of those would be by knockout.

          After all those fights and all those wins, I got a call one morning and it was my trainer, he said to me “you finally got your shot” and I asked him what he was talking about. He explained that a man from south Kansas City called him and asked if I would be interested in fighting for a world title, and of course I was in shock then immediately replied yes, it has always been one of my dreams to fight for a world title one day.

I was scheduled to fight a guy named Derrick Campos from Topeka Kansas, his record was 9-1 and we were fighting for the MWBA . The winner of the fight would automatically be ranked in the top 20 in the world. We fought on July 23^rd at Terrible Casino in St. Joseph, Mo. Derrick was one of the hardest hitting guys that I had ever fought, not only could he hit very hard, he could take a really good punch, so no matter how hard I would hit him he would just keep coming forward. He was my toughest opponent I had ever faced but I dug down deep and pulled off a major upset by winning by unanimous decision.

          The following month I would receive a phone call that would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I received a call from one of Don King’s match makers, They asked me If I wanted to go out to Las Vegas and fight the number 6 ranked fighter in the country. His name was Julio Caesar Chavez Jr, the son of the world famous Julio Caesar Chavez Sr, who wad a former world champion himself. The fight was scheduled for the summer of 2007 and was going to be held at the MGM Grand hotel and casino on HBO PPV. I went into the fight determined, but as the fight came closer it started to hit me that even though my friends and family wouldn’t be in Las Vegas with me, they were still going to be watching me on T.V. That did not stop me from getting in there and trying my best, unfortunately my best wasn’t good enough that night, I lost the fight. I went into the fight thinking I would be ok and nothing would happen to me, I was completely wrong. During the first round I was doing ok, he would hit me a few times and I would return a few myself, that went on the whole first round, then the second round started and from the very beginning he hit me with a right hand straight in the nose and broke it, then he started to hit me in my ribs and my stomach and I couldn’t take anymore and the referee stopped the fight.

          I would go on to fight two more times in Las Vegas and meet some of the sports biggest stars such as Floyd Mayweather, Oscar de la Hoya, Shane Mosley, Zab Judah, Rickey Hatton, Manny Pacquieo, Bernard Hopkins and Cory Spinks. I would not only meet the sports biggest stars, but I would get the chance to meet some movie stars such as Michael J Fox at the Thomas and Mac center, I met Mario Lopez and Alex Baldwin at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Then one of my most memorable moments in my whole boxing career was when I got the chance to sit with Tito Ortiz and Jenna Jameson, Jay-Z and Beyonce at some fights at Caesars Palace.

          After my loss in Las Vegas, I decided to take some time off of boxing for awhile. But I knew it wouldn’t take long for me to get back in the gym. I fought six more times in my hometown, and I won all six of them. My confidence was up and I was feeling great, that’s when I decided to get a little out of control when it came to taking certain fights just for the money. I would fight seven more times and everyone of those fights was for the wrong reasons. I would take fights for vacation purposes or because they would pay me a lot of money, I didn’t want to stop boxing and most importantly I didn’t want to have to get a normal nine to five job. In those seven fights, I was able to fight in Tampa, Florida, Santa Barbara, California, Ontario, California, Charlotte, North Carolina, Reno, Nevada, Saint Louis, Missouri, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Every one of those fights was a loss and a severe reality check for me. After all of these losses, it had me really rethinking my career choices. I would take two years off of boxing and think about everything that was important to me. My record went downhill fast. I went from 11-2 to now 12-13. As of right now I train as hard as I can,  stay in shape, wait until I get called for a fight so I can get back into the swing of things, and get my boxing career back on track so I can begin earning legitimate money.

          All in all my boxing career has been like a really long roller coaster ride, with a lot of ups and a lot of downs. It has taught me a valuable lesson about life and friendship, because when you are in a sport that involves fighting and money there are a lot of people that like to use you to make them money. I don’t think about ever wanting to change my decision with boxing and the career path I chose to take, however, I do think about my future in boxing. I don’t know if I’m going to stick with it and give it another try or to give it up permanently.

On becoming a chicano

         My racial identity is Polish-American. I have not really ever went through any struggles throughout my life with my racial identity. In fact i cant remember when i have ever been approched with any questions or comments about racial identity or even my family background. The most i have ever been through when it comes to racial discrimination is my friends joking around with me by calling me a polock or making racial jokes about me being a polock. They never did it in such a way i would feel embarassed or ashamed because i knew they were just playing around. I would get teased more in school and with my friends about me being so short more often than i would about my racial identity.

           Although i have found out first hand how racial discrimination effects someone, one of my bestfriends is Mexican-American and has lived in the united states his whole life. I have seen and heard people talk down to him because of that. The things that people would say and the things that people would do to him were terrible but he never really let it get to him for the most part, or if it did he would not show it in front of me. I believe it takes a very strong person to put up with some of the racial discrimination that goes on these days, i know it is nowhere near as bad as it was back in the civil rights ear, but nontheless there isn't anyone that deserves to be treated in such a way where they do not feel welcome or appriciated.

How it feels to be colored me

                   I think Hurston addresses racial discrimination very well. she acts like the type of person that takes it stride by stride and just rolls with things as they go by. Just like at the beginning of the story as all the tourist would drive by and pay her money to watch her dance and  sing then look at her like she should be in a side show but Hurston would just act like there was nothing to worry about and would just go about her buisness. I thing Hurston handled the situation very well concidering her age. No matter what the situation was or how much people looked at her or watched her dance and sing she would not get upset or say anything that would offend people.

                  I think some people might disagree with her because there are others out there getting looked at the same way she was getting looked at and others would probably want her to stick up for herself and say something to them. Some people might even look at things like an "eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth". Then there are the people who i think are the complete opposite, they might look at her like she has some sort of menatal disability and even make the situation worse by making fun of her.

Topic for task one

        My paper is going to be on my boxing experience and some of the pros and cons of the sport. some people like to think of boxing as a brutal sport and sometimes barbaric, but that is not the case for the most part. Boxing is a sanctioned sport and actually is very safe if you prepare yourself the correct way. there are many benifits to boxing, good health is the biggest binifit of all because as long as you are in shape and physically fit you can always maintain good health skills that will last for a lifetime. As a boxer myself i can say personally it has effected my life in a positive way because it has taken me to places that i would never been able to go otherwise, Being professional makes it even better because you get paid to do something that you love.
          But then there are the cons to the sport. one of the biggest and most dangerous con to the sport is cheating. I once went to a fight in Las Vegas where there was a fighter who put plaster on his hand wraps (which gets rock hard when wet) and almost killed the other fighter. Another con to the sport is kind of a catch 22, Like i said about the good health and staying in shape, there is always those guys that do it just for the money and they dont like to train and get physically prepared for there bout, that is the easiest way to get yourself seriously injured or killed. I have been in boxng for 11 years and during my time as a fighter i know of 5 Boxers that have lost there lives while fighting, and 3 that were put in a coma.

          I thought the introductory paragraph set the scene for the story very well, but i didnt think the story would be told in the way that it was. i thought the story would be about his grandmother raising him from a little child until her passing but that was not the case.
      
          I found the a few stricking phrases in this story, like the one where he would talk about his father and his journey to work everyday for 30 years and how he would bring home certian magizines or news articals like clock work on certian days. But what i found most stricking was when he would talk about when his grandmother was getting old and cenile, how she would smear her feces all over her body and she would tear holes into the furniture and the sheets. I didnt expect him to get so in depth about his grandmothers condition right before she passed.

           Then at the end of the story where he says " Call no man happy until he be dead" by by greek lawgiver solon. then he gives his own little speal about his mother that he thought of so highly, was so strong willed and was the back bone of the family, now she is in the same situation as his grandmother. I thought that was a very good ending to the story because no matter how strong willed some people are (like he thought his mother was) they sercome to the realization of being old and cenile.