Beautiful Boxer

By Emmanuelle

NO. This is not a write-up in reaction to one of those Chinese movies of the high-flying, hand-chopping, and ear-splitting keening kind.

I write this in praise of a beautiful lady who boxes for a living, and who is so good at it, she found fame in the bloody, bone-crunching process. She is presently ranked super bantamweight champion by three different world boxing organizations.

And so it goes that, in a macho world where champions are not crowned no matter how threateningly one staked one’s life to conquer the throne, this beautiful boxer is rewarded with a belt sculpted from the thickest of leather, with the heaviest of metals clipped unto it.

She has three such belts for besting the bests of three sets.

Curious, I carried one, and I staggered back, breath cut out in mid-stride. It must have weighted kilos, even tons.

I must have lost more than a second of breath, for here I am, writing days after the event, and I begin right smack at the middle of it. No beginning and no ending.

JULATON

I write of my close encounter with Ana Julaton, of course. She who sports the middle name “The Hurricane”. The lady who boxes for a living. What does she do for sports and recreation then, I wonder?

Does she jog and brisk-walk and push-up and bend and stretch-out with the ipods like the rest of us ordinary mortals? Or does she go straight to the bag and punch it down to the ground, without preliminaries and pardon me, may I? punch you down? to the ground?

I shot her, and all those who grabbed for her attention. No, not with a gun. Just with the harmless camera and the camcorder. And recorded her passing through this part of our world for posterity. I zoomed in to her face, and nada! no sign at all of scars just above the eyebrows or anywhere on her fine-boned face. She has seductive eyes sleekly turned up, nose appropriately presentable, good enough for breathing in, breathing out. And lips not so thin as to seem cruel but neither thick as to invite luscious trouble.

Like all educated Filipino-Americans, she speaks fluently, clearly of her thoughts. Her voice and her accent simply bowl one over.

But let me tell you why she is so beautiful to me. She enjoys most posing with the children more than with the adults; with the kids, she has wider smiles, on her lips and in her eyes. And once, in-between shoots, the network’s make-up person stepped up to her to smooth out the long hair. Ana reached up, touched the person’s face, for thanks. Still zoomed-in on her face, I saw playfully bright, intelligent eyes turned soft, gentle. One cannot see such change just by looking, even if one had four eyes. One had to have a camera zoomed in, closer than close.

Beautiful.

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