I am awoken by a shot, a straight jab that snaps my head back cruelly and brings the gym’s speckled ceiling into relief. I think briefly of how it’s bad form to daydream while boxing, akin to placing your head on a golf tee. Then I say, “Ugh!” or words to that effect, and stagger across the ring.

My opponent, a 19-year-old southpaw from Brooklyn, named William Shamar Whitt, had been taking it easy on me, toying with me really, like Bobby Fischer corralling Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. But his instinct finally gets the better of him. I wish I could say I’d at least seen the punch. “Are you all right?” asks Whitt, an absurdly photogenic, 141lb junior welterweight with sand-brown skin and a gap-tooth smile, who reminds me of a young Laurence Fishburne. “Yeah,” I say feebly, with an audible groan from my neck. As we resume sparring, I’m surprised to find myself still ambulatory.