Fights are often won and lost before boxers enter the ring, so Patrick McKendry took a close-up look at a day in the training life of Joseph Parker.
In The Fight, Norman Mailer's evocative account of The Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974, a chapter is devoted to the writer's training run with Ali a week before the two great heavyweights clashed in the ring.
In the days before the clash in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ali was riffing with the press about how he was going to beat Foreman.
"Just another gym workout," says Ali. "The fight will be easy."
Mailer, an American writer in a class of his own then and now, 13 years after his death, asks Ali whether he could run with him.
"You can't keep up with me," replies Ali.
"I don't intend to try. I just want to run a little," says Mailer.
"Show up," says Ali with a shrug.
As Joseph Parker prepares to fight fellow New Zealander Junior Fa, both of whom would distance themselves from any comparison with the man forever known as The Greatest apart from their profession and weight class, it is suggested by the Herald that I may wish to train with Parker and write about it.
"It could be good," offers a senior figure within the sports department. "You know, do a Mailer-type piece with Joe. It'll be fun."
It's at this point that I will distance myself from having any similarity with Mailer apart from the fact that I'm approaching the age at which he ran with Ali that night long ago (he was 51 — I am approaching the half century), and that I am paid to write stories.
I send Parker a text and his reply is prompt. "Yes, I'll let the coach know. Let's do it, brother." It was settled.
Mailer's training session was scheduled for 3am and he immediately faced a dilemma. Return to his hotel and get some sleep like Ali, who was in bed by 9pm, or push through the night?
An intrepid man, he decided on the latter, and, after a variety of alcoholic drinks and a heavy dinner of fish chowder and a pepper steak, plus ice cream, he found himself outside Ali's villa at the appointed time.
My schedule was far kinder — a relatively short drive to Parker's fitness coach Grant Hirzel's house in Hobsonville at 3pm on a Friday, four weeks and one day before Parker's scheduled December 12 fight with Fa at Auckland's Spark Arena that was later postponed to February.
Which isn't to say I didn't feel the approach of an existential crisis like Mailer did. I had prepared by taking an afternoon nap and a couple of paracetamol for a headache — probably stress related for fear of making a fool of myself in front of the former heavyweight champion of the world.
In truth, for the past eight months I had been doing weights at the local rugby club gym.
A silver lining to being made redundant at the start of a pandemic is that I suddenly had a lot more time to exercise.
I'd also resumed cycling as my 14-year-old daughter had started riding for her school and a good standard of fitness was required to have any hope of keeping up with her and her teammates. Actually, make that an excellent standard of fitness because those kids go like rockets.
So, I was confident that I could hang in there with Parker for a while. A bit of a taster of what he does, maybe? It was the not knowing what to expect and the potential for epic failure that was discomforting.
As I waited in my car in the warm afternoon sun for Parker to appear, he sent a message saying he would be about 15 minutes late. "All good," I reply. "I'm just chilling in my car and feeling increasingly weak."
"Ha ha," Parker replies.
Hirzel, Parker's coach, is built like a tighthead prop but with a ready smile and an easy manner which suggests he has taken many an unsuspecting client to the limit and beyond, and that guiding me on a similar journey wouldn't be an overly taxing task.
I suddenly remembered that Mailer was joining Ali during the tapering part of his training in the days before the event whereas I am joining Parker at the point where he is still striving for physical gains.
I mentally curse my naivety. Regardless, I thank Hirzel for allowing me to be involved at the session in his converted garage and say I'll just do a bit of what Parker does, providing that's okay.
"Oh, no," Hirzel says. "You're in it for the lot, mate."
"Oh."
"Any injuries?" he asks.
"Umm, I had ankle surgery last year, but nothing else really."
"You did your rehab though, right?"
"Yes."
"Good, and don't worry, you only have to run to the top of the drive."
What Hirzel failed to mention was that I would be towing him up the steep drive with a large elastic band. While sprinting. Four times. And that I'd be doing that after completing a mixture of agility ladders, upright bench press, ski machine, assault bike, upright row machine, and continuous lifting of a 35kg medicine ball onto a platform. All performed with fast, explosive movements.
It's manageable to begin with. Parker and I chat briefly on the ladders, which are outside and mercifully in the shade.
"How's your dog," he asks, knowing that the McKendry family had taken possession of a miniature Schnauzer during the March lockdown.
"Good, thanks," I gasp.
"We've got one now too," he says easily. "It's a German Shepherd called Kaiser."
"Of course," I reply. "How old?"
"Four and a half months."
"Chewing up your shoes?"
"No, but it is digging up the turf in my backyard."
But then the hard three-minute efforts, one-minute rest schedule begins to take its toll. The only talk comes from Hirzel and it's not exactly chit chat.
"Come on, work," he says. "It's not time for a rest, we have one minute to go."
Later he asks me: "Enjoying it?"
"Not really," I reply.
"Well I'm enjoying watching it."
Each effort becomes harder, each rest seems shorter. It's getting to the point where I'm feeling nauseous. I keep it at bay, but the feeling returns with a vengeance after our first set of runs up the drive.
The effort to get to the top is hard enough, but the expected relief when I get there refuses to come. The cumulative efforts drive a wave of nausea from the pit of my stomach — a strong suggestion that my body isn't pleased. The hurt is not just muscular, but on a cellular level, as if every particle in my being has been doing its own specific work-out. It feels like my heart and lungs have been disassembled, held near a fire, and reassembled.
On the way down the drive I tell Hirzel I feel like I'm about to vomit. "That would make a great story," he sympathises.
I'm not so sure about that but I do know I'm exhausted and nearly finished. Mailer decided to quit about 3km into his run with Ali; he was on the limit until the gradient increased and then "something in the added burden told him that he was not going to make it without a breakdown in the engines".
Hirzel allows me to sit out a set (I'd missed a couple earlier too). I lie on the cool concrete and offer my lungs respite. They are immensely grateful. Parker just keeps going.
After a fashion, so do I.
"You okay?" Hirzel asks.
"Yeah, I think so."
"Good, and you're nearly getting the colour back in your face."
When it's over I feel a ridiculous sense of achievement. Actually, it was probably a euphoria brought on by relief. "Hallelujah," I say.
I didn't quit as much as have an extended rest before resuming. I did the lot. I showed up.
I ask Hirzel to describe in basic terms what we had just done over the preceding hour and a bit.
"We were doing a mixture of weights and plyometrics, so the equivalent of Joe having to throw lots of hard, fast punches with a lot of force, and still being able to move around the ring," he replies. "We were doing three-minute rounds with a mixture of exercise, as you would expect.
"Was it easy?" he asks.
"No," I reply.
"No. So, three-minute rounds and one-minute rest — back-to-back conditioning so he gets to a point where he can deliver peak performance."
I ask Parker what he thinks about when he finds himself in the red zone as I quickly did.
"That this is hard," Parker replies. "That's what I'm thinking — this is frickin' hard. And obviously the fight, the camp that we have and what I want to achieve. I want to be way fitter than the other guy. If I lose to someone it's because of skill — they have a better skillset. But I never want to lose a fight where the other person was fitter than I was."
I ask whether he thinks about Fa.
"Not really. For this fight, when I saw him and his team [at the fight announcement], he was in my mind a bit. Now my focus is fully on my training and what I want to achieve and putting in the best effort I can. Closer to the fight… there will be times when I think of him because I'll be watching his videos and seeing the good and not so good things he does in the ring."
Does Parker dream about the fight?
"Yes. I visualise. I visualise myself knocking him out. I visualise catching him. I also visualise him getting the better of me in the fight and me fighting out of a bad situation. I think it's important to visualise just in case it happens. That way it's not a surprise."
Before Parker arrived at Hirzel's house, he had done a full boxing workout with trainer Kevin Barry: pad-work, bag-work, skipping and shadow boxing.
The day before he had sparred eight rounds. The next morning, a Saturday, he had a sprints session starting at 7am.
My next non-negotiable assignment was returning home and selecting a cold pilsner from the fridge.
Having burned what Hirzel estimated as between 800 and 1000 calories, I'd earned it. For Parker, the near daily suffering will continue for a long time yet.
A day later Parker texts to ask how I'm feeling. When I reply that I'm feeling surprisingly good apart from having a sore neck, he says: "Come to sprints next week. Ha ha."
I politely decline.
I have a set of aging hamstrings to protect, not to mention an undefeated record.
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