Hard to Tell Losers from Winners at Navy

The Sunday Capital by Joe Gross March 2, 2003

His breath came in quick, labored gasps. His hands and arms were weighted down by an overload of stress and fatigue. Each plodding step forward added to the weariness that submerged him deeper into the rapidly all-consuming exhaustion. But Bryan Kendris refused to give up. His determination to keep fighting was overwhelming. Word around the Naval Academy in the days preceding Friday night’s Brigade Boxing Championships was that Kendris didn’t stand a chance against the 132-pound defending champion Frank Parisi.

Considering that Parisi is a tough guy from the Bronx, a member of the Navy boxing team, a defending national champion, the assessment of Kendris’ destiny seemed most accurate. After all, before going into the ring against Parisi, Kendris had all of four fights. But, after enduring the obstacles of the preliminary rounds of the tournament, after reaching the finals of the Naval Academy’s in-house competition the junior from New Oxford, PA, was going to hang in no matter what.

“I knew Frank would hit me hard. He did!” Kendris said after the fight. “I knew in my heart that I would never quit anything I went into. That’s how I always feel. That’s my attitude in general. That’s the way I go into anything.” “Frank’s experience level is so high compared to mine. I’ve had four fights, I just go out for the smoker each year. Frank has had 30 or maybe 40 fights. He knows what he is doing all the time in there. And all I could do in that situation was to give it my all. I couldn’t expect anything less from myself,” Kendris said. He backed away and backed away and backed away, still getting hit over and over and over again. His aching right arm came up in a vain attempt to swath the blotches of blood and sweat from his bruised face. He got hit again. And he responded with one of the rare right hands that landed on Parisi’s head.

Kendris was not thinking about getting out of the fight. He was still looking for an opening to land a ounch on his talented opponent. All the while, Parisi fought like a man battling for his life. He seemed to know something about Kendris’ makeup. “I knew going into the fight that (Kenris) was a tough kid,” said Parisi. “I wasn’t even thinking about him going down when we got into the ring. He’s taller than me, and has a longer reach. I had to use angles to stay out of his reach and use some of my speed to counter his punches.” Parisi’s strategy worked to near perfection. Kendris rarely got an opportunity to land a blow to the quicker, more experienced fighter.

Kendris couldn’t escape Parisi’s accurately aimed flying fists that landed repeatedly between the facial flaps of the protective headgear used by the amateur boxers. The leather of Parisi’s gloves thudded against Kendris’ face, his mouth, his nose, his eyes became bloody early on and stayed that way until the last of so many painful blows had been delivered. Parisi’s punches rocked Kendris time and time again. Buckled his knees. Snapped his neck. Splattered his blood. The referee would stop the fight for standing- eight counts, when Kendris seemed to be hurt. He would stop the fight to have Kedris checked by the doctor at ringside. Another standing-eight count. Another medical audit of his faculties.

I hoped they wouldn’t stop the fight, but I knew it was a possibility. I just knew that if given the chance I could try to make something happen,” Kendris said. A lesser man would have called off the hostility, would have walked away, would have quit. Bryan Kendris wouldn’t do that. And for the number of ounches he landed and for the way they distorted Kendris’ face, Frank Parisi didn’t expect his opponent to back down. “A couple of times I was able to hit him with a nice clean left and that would open him up for some other combinations I went in for,” Parisi explained. “I didn’t expect the referee to stop the contest or for him to go down. Every time the referee gave him a standing-eight count he was perfectly fine and ready to go again. He was telling the ref, ‘I’m ready, I’m ready.’ “I had no doubt that he would keep fighting until the end,” Parisi added.

There was no mystery when the referee stood between the combatants to raise the arm of the vistor. Would it be Parisi, with an unblemished face, still springy legs and a cockiness that comes with winning a national championship? Or would it be Kendris, with red and purple bruises on his cheeks and shoulders and arms, with streaks of blood on his face and a drizzle of blood still coming from his nose and with aching arms that had been pummeled nearly as much as his face?

Even before the obvious decision was announced the people in the jammed packed stands stood and cheered and yelled and applauded their approval, perhaps more for the courageous, gusty Kendris than for the victorious Parisi.

It was one of those fights that told the real story of what Brigade Boxing is all about. The two young men helped each other out of the ring as the fans cheered. And while Frank Parisi was declared the winner of that fight, there was no loser.