He looks across the ring, where physicians are crowding around Day. He looks out at the crowd and up toward the lights and anywhere but into the lens. The house music plays on.Ĭharles Conwell stands in the neutral corner, rocking from one foot to the other. Day’s chest heaves and heaves, but he does not blink, just stares glassy-eyed into the floodlights. “Get away! Get-get away from him!” Only now does Conwell turn and see that Day has not moved. He vaults onto the ropes and flexes his biceps, then leaps down and flashes an electric smile.Ī man shoves his way into the ring. The crowd is roaring, and Conwell is pounding his chest. The referee doesn’t even bother with the 10-count. Another overhand right whistles by his cheek, but a big left hook hits him square on the chin and he collapses onto the canvas. As Day retreats, Conwell stuns him with an overhand right. Day tries to wheel away, as he has done all night, but this time his legs fail him, and Conwell is ready for the maneuver. Before this one he wrote I WILL KO MY NEXT OPPONENT AND DOMINATE.Ĭonwell throws a straight right and an uppercut left, and another right and another left, the punches flowing together in quicksilver combinations, and all Day can do is bear-hug him. Sometimes, before fights, Conwell will write himself a short note to hang above his bed. But he also knows, as all boxers do, that people don’t pay to see a 10-round decision. He is a defensive virtuoso, but he hits hard enough to crumple a body like cardboard, and even as he repels Day’s blows, he stalks forward in a spring-loaded crouch, peering over the tops of his gloves with a kind of predatory patience.Ĭonwell knows that he can wait this round out. At 21 years old, Conwell is everything Day once was and more: an 11-time national champion, a 2016 Olympian, a perfect 10–0 since he went pro. He jabs, then hooks, then jabs again, but his blows all deflect off Charles Conwell. Either he scores a knockout in the next three minutes or he loses. “You got no choice,” his coach told him before the final round began. If this bout does not go well, Day’s career could be over.Īnd it is not going well: Day went down in the fourth round and again in the eighth, and he’s way behind on points. Just a few months ago, he was overwhelmed by a Dominican prospect who called himself “El Caballo Bronco.” On this October night in 2019, at the Wintrust Arena, in Chicago, there is a sense that the 27-year-old Day is fighting for a good deal more than the mid-tier title belt officially under dispute. One bad loss to a weak fighter, and the glow was gone. 1 amateur welterweight, Olympic alternate, undefeated in his first 10 professional fights. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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