The Boxer

By TOM ZUCCO

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 19, 2001

On fight night at a local bar, a tattoo artist laced up the gloves and got his face rearranged. He did it for love. Or maybe for nothing.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Maybe she'd care. Maybe she wouldn't.

Maybe she'd see what a terrible beating he'd taken for her, throw her arms around him and whisper that everything would be okay.

Or maybe she'd just roll her eyes and tell him he was a fool. That everything he did was a waste of time.

That he took all those punches for nothing.

He promised he'd call her on his cell phone when the fight was over. At the moment, though, he didn't feel much like talking.

Tom Sanderson, 31, was slumped in a patio chair outside the Goldstar bar. It was 1 a.m., it was cold, and he was a mess. His lower lip was sliced, his left eye was growing more purple by the second, and he was pressing a bag of ice against his broken nose.

His heart wasn't in such good shape, either.

[Photo courtesy of Tom Sanderson] Teresa Hwa and Tom Sanderson.

He had just spent about 21/2 minutes in a boxing ring. A long 21/2 minutes. His opponent was a younger, faster and stronger man. Sanderson had been knocked down twice in the first round, but had somehow managed to stagger to his feet and continue.

When a right hook sent him to the wooden floor again early in the second round, the referee stopped the fight. There were screams of delight when he went down, and several women in the crowd cringed and turned away.

Sanderson struggled back to his corner on his hands and knees.

This was what the crowd wanted. This was what they came to see.

Goldstar, a bar on First Avenue N, across from the Florida International Museum, has staged amateur boxing every Tuesday night since early December. The bouts consist of three two-minute rounds, and the winner gets a $25 bar tab. (The state doesn't regulate boxing if there's no cash prize.) Anyone can fight, as long as he signs a waiver form and doesn't have any boxing experience. The fighters wear protective headgear and mouthguards, and the referee stops the bout when one of them wants to quit.

But surrender was something Tom Sanderson couldn't do. Each time his head snapped back from a punch or he was pummeled backward into the ropes, he straightened up, touched his gloves together and fought on.

Until he couldn't get up anymore.

Why did he take such a beating? For a few free drinks?

He didn't even get that.

"Marital problems," he answered. "The possibility of divorce is on the horizon. We've been talking about it for a couple of weeks, and I just needed to do this."

Tom and Teresa Sanderson have been married five years. They've been together 10. Tom is a tattoo artist and Teresa tends bar. They live in Clearwater with their two children, ages 3 and 7.

"I needed to release some anger and frustration," Tom said, "and this seemed like a safe way to do it."

Safe?

"Well," he said, "otherwise, I'd just go home and cry."

So what's going to happen when he goes home and she turns on the light? How will he explain his face? What is she going to say?

"She'll be upset with me," Tom said, staring at his sneakers. "She told me not to come home with a busted lip, a broken nose or a black eye.

"I got all three."

He shifted the ice bag to his eye and tried to touch his nose.

"Yep. Broken."

He didn't want to call home just yet. He needed time to think. What would he say?

What would she say?

"Please try to put this in the story," he said as he got up to leave. "It's really important."

He lifted his hands and said in a loud voice, "I love you, Princess.

"It was all for you."

They got about 60 people the first time they staged the fights. Five weeks later, despite limited advertising, several hundred people pack the bar on a night that's usually dead. So many people want to get in that they're moving the ring to the Jannus Landing courtyard.

"We never thought it would be this big, this fast," says Goldstar manager Jimmy Jordan.

Fighters wear 16-ounce gloves but no protective cup. An official is posted on each side of the ring to keep the fighters from falling through the ropes. And to keep the crowd away from the fighters.

"We've had no huge problems," Jordan says. "No one has been seriously hurt, and we haven't even had an argument in here."

Like the spectators, most of the people who fight are in their 20s and early 30s. Some of them are friends.

"These are hospitality people from different restaurants," Jordan says. "Crabby Bill's, the Wing House . . . working people.

"You can't be mad or drunk," he adds. "And you can't be trained at all in boxing. We went around to the local boxing clubs, and the owners said that if a boxer shows up down here, they won't let him back in the club.

"You have to understand. It's just for fun."

It's about 10:30 on a recent Tuesday night, and all of First Avenue N is sleeping. Except Goldstar. The line to get in reaches to the street.

Inside, it's dark and loud. Hip-hop and high energy dance music pound from the speakers. Anticipation is building. In the back of the bar, near the ring, the crowd is shoulder to shoulder. It's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and the fights haven't even begun.

The center of attention is the ring, a plywood square enclosed by two parallel ropes. (A regular boxing ring has a canvas and plywood floor and three and sometimes four ropes.)

The crowd around the ring is six or seven deep when it's announced that the fights will begin soon. With plastic cups in their hands and eyes fixed on the ring, people stand on platforms, chairs -- anything that will give them a better view.

The buzz in the crowd tonight is that Ronald "Winky" Wright is in the house. Wright is a St. Petersburg boxing legend, now sitting just one fight away from a world title. His record is 41-3, he's ranked No. 1 in the world as a super-welterweight, and in May he's scheduled to move up to junior middleweight and fight world champion Felix Trinidad.

[Times photo: Jamie Francis] Shawn Walker, left, and Ed Garcia mix it up during Goldstar’s amateur fight night, where bar patrons challenge one another and take part in fights that are more brawling than boxing. This match was won by Walker during the second round, after Garcia stopped the fight.

Naturally, prospective fighters seek out the quiet man in the black leather jacket for advice, which he gladly gives.

"I tell them to let the other person wear themselves out," Wright says. "Make them tired and them beat 'em up."

He says most people don't know how tiring boxing is, especially for someone who has never done it. And the chances of getting hurt are high.

"But it's an alternative to having people fight in the street," he says.

"Although this isn't boxing. No way.

"This is fighting."

The bouts look like something you'd see in a high school parking lot after school. Lots of pushing, lots of wild punches, lots of stumbling blindly into each other.

And then there are the women.

Becky Anhari, 18, decided to fight when she walked in the door.

"I want to kick some ass," she says. "I want to do it."

She's 18, she went to Clearwater High, she works as a cashier at Wendy's and says she's qualified because she's a tomboy.

"My parents don't know I'm doing this," she says. "They're big religious freaks. But it'll be fun."

When her time comes, Anhari simply lowers her head and moves forward, her arms flailing like an egg-beater. Her opponent easily steps aside and lands punch after punch. The bout resembles a bullfight, but Anhari lasts all three rounds, and when the crowd gives the victory to her opponent she checks her mouth for blood and tries to explain.

"I couldn't see her," she says, gasping. "My hair kept getting in my face."

Moments later, she climbs out of the ring.

"I need to cut down to two packs a day," she says.

And so it goes, until the second-to-last fight of the night.

Tom Sanderson's fight.

Teresa Sanderson was sleeping when Tom called on his cell phone. He was on his way home, he said, and the fight hadn't gone very well.

"I understand why he did it," Teresa said later. "We've been fighting and not getting along, and he was real frustrated.

"But I didn't want him to get hurt. It kind of shocked me when he told me he was. I thought he was kidding at first. Then I was upset.

"I wish he hadn't done it."

There was one more thing. The matter of the request her husband had made the night before. The message was delivered.

"That's so sweet," Teresa said, her voice cracking. "So sweet.

"I just think he was trying to prove how much he cares about me. He's trying to show me that he really loves me.

"But he didn't have to do that."

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