He needed answers.
Badly.
ld flesh, he didn't show it. Or was too polite to show it.
As he left my office, I couldn't help but notice the dark cloud that surrounded him. His aura.
Guilt, I knew, was eating him alive.
He needed answers.
Badly.
When Russell had gone, I brought up Google and researched the hell out of him.
In particular, I found the fight in question. The fight with Caesar Marquez had been a big deal, apparently. Both fighters were considered front runners to eventually contend for the welterweight title. Both fighters were roughly the same age. Same height. Same records. Same everything.
Except, now one was dead.
And the other was living with punishing, crushing guilt. I knew this. I had felt it from Russell, coming off him in wave after wave.
The crushing guilt was the least of my concerns. The black halo that completely surrounded his body was a different matter. A very serious matter.
Perhaps it was not so serious to others, but to me, I knew the implications. Russell needed help. He also needed protection. And, considering the vast amount of guilt he was dealing with...perhaps he needed protection from himself.
No, he hadn't appeared suicidal, but I was also no expert in psychological issues. And since I wasn't close enough to him to read his thoughts, all I had to go on were my gut impressions.
And my gut told me that he had a very heavy heart.
Baker vs. Marquez hadn't been a big pay-per-view event, but HBO had hyped it up pretty good. All in all, the fight had lasted four rounds. Up through three rounds, two judges had scored the fight in favor of Russell, but one had it in favor of Caesar. Pretty even.
That is, until "the punch."
I wanted to see the punch for myself. It turned out that YouTube had some pretty grisly videos on their website. In fact, there were easily a half dozen such boxing death videos. I first watched Russell's fight, then forced myself to watch the other five, too, for comparison.
Most of the videos showed two guys hammering each other in the ring. Generally, one guy was doing a lot of hammering, and one guy was doing a lot of receiving. At least that was the trend. In five of the six fights, one opponent was clearly dominating the other opponent.
But not in Russell's fight.
Their fight, at least to my untrained eye - and the truth was, I was perhaps more trained than most - their fight seemed fairly even, as the judge's scorecards had indicated.