Peek-a-Boo Fighters, Tough Guys, and the Vaccine

You can see why most people had their money on Jess Willard.  He was 6’ 6” and 245 pounds, a monster nicknamed the ‘Pottawatomie Giant’ who had knocked out the great Jack Johnson to win the heavyweight boxing crown in 1915.  Four years later, in Toledo, the contender he faced was 60 pounds lighter and a full five inches shorter.  However, this would be the day that made them both famous, Willard for suffering what’s been called the greatest beating in the history of boxing, and Jack Dempsey, the new champion, for dishing it out with a crabbed, bent armed, whole-bodied whirling action that floored Willard seven times in the first round and convinced him not to answer the bell for the fourth.  

Despite his gifts of size and strength, Willard was said to have a very laid back personality.  He probably never imagined the level of fury he would face that day.  Dempsey had brawled his way through Colorado mining camps as a teenager.  

These mechanics, coupled with the gloves held close to the eyes and the body swaying - as opposed to standing and jousting with jabs and crosses - was formalized over time into the ‘Peek-a-Boo’ style.  The whole idea was to avoid being hit while getting one’s self into an advantageous position, which was especially important for smaller fighters trying to breach the defenses of taller men.  It worked pretty well for Floyd Patterson as well as Mike Tyson, who was a genius at both flanking opponents and launching savage levels of whole bodied power. One of the most brutal shots of his early career came as he ducked a big right hand from Michael Jack Johnson, stepping to his left and driving a left hook into Johnson’s exposed liver, dropping him instantly.  Johnson actually got up to face a standing eight-count, but on the very next punch his front teeth were driven through his mouth guard.  It was 39 seconds into the fight.  

In my weekend combatives workouts, my training partner, who is younger, faster, taller, and a far more experienced boxer, though not a Peek-a-Boo fighter, is generously teaching me that style, with its slipping punches and then getting in and turning close to targets that aren’t entirely guarded.  The steps, turns, and punches are all one in the same motion.  I’m starting to land more shots in our sparring sessions, and I’ve seen his eyes go wide a few times even as he’s kind enough to shout, ‘Good!  Good!’

I used to work a lot harder and take more of a beating.  I could always hang tough, but it’s much more fun to be smart.  Does being smarter make me all the more tough in the long run?  

That’s a valid question in view of having gotten my first Pfizer vaccine dose.  In a month’s time, a world altering pandemic could be ending for me.  You’re pretty bulletproof three weeks after the first shot, say the physicians’ website and podcast gang.  The second shot finishes the effect after a week or two more. 

The declines in deaths and disease transmission, not to mention the increase in joyous reunions among family members, are enough to make me wonder why anyone in their right mind would refuse the vaccine.  Various reasons are given, among them distrust of the Biden administration or a vaccine they feel was rushed to the point of being unsafe, a belief that the virus was never that dangerous to begin with, and a desire to pledge loyalty to the Republican Party.  

49 percent of Republican men say they will not get the vaccine.  This is likely the same bunch that wouldn’t wear masks, since that’s an unmanly admission of vulnerability.  Instead, they’d rather be like Robert Duvall’s Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in APOCALYPSE NOW, shirt off, striding the beach after his ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ air assault has taken a Vietnamese village.  Around him, mortar blasts send his soldiers diving for cover, but Kilgore can’t be bothered.  He has a napalm strike to call in, so a champion surfer who’s along for the ride can take advantage of a perfect set just off shore.  His job done, he utters that famous line, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’

That means these guys are willing to face risks on two levels.  Internally, they’ll take their chances with a disease that doesn’t seem too bad for folks without co-morbidities.  That’s also the case with measles; most folks can beat it, but complications include pneumonia and encephalitis.  It’s best to steer clear.  Most folks can beat whooping cough, but the danger there is pneumonia and seizures, which can lead to brain damage and death.  All these Republican Kilgores striding the beach with their shirts off probably don’t think much of these diseases, since they got vaccinated against them as little kids.  Yeah, they can beat coronavirus, just as long as their antiviral interferons kick in right off the bat - and are not fooled by that interferon suppressing effect found to be common in SARS and MERS viruses.  If things don’t go exactly as planned - which can happen with little penny-ante stuff like measles -  and you let that sucker replicate, the napalm strike that kills you is from your own inflammatory cytokines.  

Jess Willard played those odds.  What were the chances that a six-foot-one, 185 pound guy would climb into the ring and kick his ass?

The second risk, on an external level, is that guys who laugh off the disease create breeding grounds that can give rise to variant forms of the virus.  In the fog of infection that every coronavirus patient breathes, several thousand imperfectly replicated particles exist.  Most of them live and die without making any kind of difference.  However, the more people there are allowing particles to replicate, the more the mutations there will be, and statistically there’s a greater chance of an outlier coming along that is resistant to the antibodies provided by the vaccine or previous infections.  Already, a variant from South Africa has shown these capacities.

Tyson was an outlier.  Peek-a-Boo fighters were outliers.  Michael Jack Johnson had no idea how to handle so much power in so close.  

I can actually sympathize with the guys who don’t have any patience for mask wearing and social distancing.    They’re measures of surrender and avoidance, admissions that we could not engage with this virus.  The difference now, however, is that - as predicted - we’re meeting it on the battlefield on our terms, in the spaces between spike proteins and cell receptors.          

So now these guys aren’t showing up - when the real fight is going down?  If you have the vaccine, and that stuff crawls inside you - it dies.  Game over.  It does not go on to endanger someone else.  You win, and you protect others.

How do they not want to be part of that?  I thought they were tough guys.  

So yes, being tougher does begin with being smarter, which in turn might begin with understanding what kind of role models you like.  Kilgore in APOCALYPSE NOW is a joke, a cartoon character, ultimately a coward whose attempt to turn the war into Spring Break, complete with surfing and beach parties, is a form of avoidance: do the bare minimum and make the boys feel like they’re still home.  Martin Sheen’s character, Willard, points out that for the enemy, ‘The way home is victory or death.’

The only other person who realizes that is Marlon Brando’s Kurtz, the Special Forces soldier gone rogue, who tells Willard, ‘You have to make a friend of horror and moral terror - or they are enemies to be feared.’  

Willard has been sent to kill Kurtz because the high command believes he’s gone insane.  This makes the entire situation truly insane, because Kurtz is right; the realities of war are absolute.  ‘You must kill without feeling, passion, or judgment.’   That the US Command can’t accept this truth probably explains why the war has been so poorly prosecuted.  

Be sure you know who your tough guys are.  

Do not avoid the war we face.  Show up.  Kill the virus without feeling, passion, or judgment.

Be brave enough to become smart.  

(thanks to ‘Life is a Story on YouTube for the APOCALYPSE NOW INSIGHTS)