Did you get punched in the nose by your boss at work today? Did he split open your lip with a right hand or crack your rib with a left hook?
Maybe he hit you so hard in the mouth that he cut your tongue and now it will take months to fully heal.
"It's got to be one of the worst jobs in sports," says sparring partner and heavyweight boxer Willie Chapman.
Perhaps he did all of that damage and didn't even pay for the medical bills. Don't bother calling the cops either because it's entirely legal.
Welcome to the world of a pro boxer's sparring partner, where daily pain and the ability to not fight back too hard are part of the job description.
"It's got to be one of the worst jobs in sports. It's hard," says Las Vegas-based heavyweight Willie Chapman, 36, who has sparred with former heavyweight champ Hasim Rahman, Wladimir Klitschko, 2000 Olympic gold medalist Audley Harrison and 2004 USA TODAY Prospect of the Year Samuel Peter.
"Every day you'd get beat up," says Jameel McCline, a 34-year-old former sparring partner for several big-name heavyweights who eventually went on to become a top fighter himself. "I did it for the experience. I wear it like a badge of honor."
Sparring partners are the anonymous fighters hired by the not-so anonymous fighters to help them prepare for an upcoming match. In other words, the sparring partner is the one who gets beat up regularly during the course of a training camp. Most good partners are ready to go three to four rounds as many as four times a week for as long as two months.
Wimps need not apply.
"We are the toughest (people) on the planet. We are tough as nails," says Chapman, who has a pro record of 18-20-3 but calls himself a professional sparring partner. "Boxing tests you every day. It gives you heart and soul. Mike Tyson cannot do my job. He don't have the heart. Being a sparring partner is my job, and I take pride in it. I never quit when I'm in there. I don't care if I die. It's better than sitting in some office."
Chapman — who once had his tongue severely ripped open while sparring — gets work with top heavyweights because he's able to imitate many styles and he's durable.
"When it comes to heavyweights, there is not a better sparring partner than me," says Chapman, who has used the money he's made sparring to help him pay for college courses and to support his 10 children. "When you're a sparring partner you want to act like the guy the other guy is going to fight. I purposely try to be like the other guy as much as I can. I believe I should get paid more because I do it so well."
No medical pay
The life of a sparring partner is hard. The work is irregular because it depends on the fighting schedule of the guys who hire you. There is no medical coverage and the pay is inconsistent. Chapman has worked for as little as $50 a day. The top partners could make a few thousand a week.
Regardless of how big or small the pay is, sparring partners have one thing in common: They are basically a piece of meat whose job depends on not being too good at fighting back but not being so easy to hit that they are of no help.
"The fastest way to get sent home as a sparring partner is to be really good or really bad," says Mike Middleton, 37, of Tampa, who has sparred with David Tua, Andrew Golota, Shannon Briggs, Michael Moorer and Corrie Sanders. "If you give them too much they'll send you home. And if you come in you're too easy to beat up and you don't give them any work at all they'll send you home. You have to give them work, but you just can't look too good.
"When you spar you know what speed to go at. You're there for the guy who is paying you. You are there to help him out. If he wants to go hard, you go hard. You go at his pace. You don't try to outdo him or they will send you home. Marvin Hagler used to say about sparring partners, 'You bring 'em in on a jet, and if they were no good we'd send them home on a bus.' "
Chapman says he learned how to follow his boss's lead early on.
"You go there not to beat him up," he says. "Just to give him good work. Beating him up doesn't do you no good because they don't give you a belt in the gym."
Sparring partners for the elite fighters will usually go to that fighter's training camp. It means being away from family and working in often spartan conditions.
"The worst part of being a sparring partner is taking care of yourself," McCline says. "No one is there to give you water in the corner. Sometimes you come into a city you are not familiar with. Your room and board is meager at best. I know one guy when he went to camp he had to stay three guys to a hotel room. The gym was a mile-and-a-half away, and they had to walk to the gym and walk back from the gym. And when they got back to the hotel the restaurant was already shut down. Sometimes it's not a very dignified job."
Says veteran manager Stan Hoffman, "You're not in charge in anything when you're the sparring partner. You're told when to get in the ring, when to get out, when to get up, when to run, when to eat."
Learning tool
McCline is one of the few boxers to escape being just a sparring partner. He turned pro in his mid 20s with just one amateur fight of experience, so his time as a sparring partner was a critical learning tool. He's since become a top 10 heavyweight and even earned a title shot, losing a split decision to Chris Byrd in November.
McCline (31-4-3, 19 KOs) says he owes much of his success to the fighters he sparred with in the early days, names such as Lennox Lewis, Tim Witherspoon, Ray Mercer, Michael Grant, Golota and Rahman.
"I got beat up so much, but I was big and strong and so young," McCline says. "I learned defense. I learned to protect myself from those guys. I know how to keep my chin down and head low. I definitely learned how to keep the shots from landing directly."
But there is also a negative that McCline says can haunt an aspiring fighter for the rest of his career.
"It gave me confidence in my chin because no one ever hurt me," he says. "Guys dazed me but no one ever took me off my feet so I got confidence. But the drawback was I didn't have the ability to learn to finish guys off. I didn't learn to sit down on my shots because I wasn't able to sit there and fight 100% with them."
Middleton (9-14-1, 5 KOs), a partner in a construction company, knows better than to rely on boxing as his full-time job. "You have to know your place in every sport," he says. "My place is if a kid is coming up and has some talent he can probably get by me. If a guy can't get by me he has no business being here."
But Middleton has the boxing bug and sparring, he says, is a great outlet. "I know I will never be able to get a fight with Tua or Golota, he says, "but I can get in and test my skills with them in the gym.
"How many people can say they've been in with those kind of guys? I'm lucky. I can show my kids pictures of me with those guys. I can say I was in the with the best. I got my (butt) kicked a lot, but hey .... "
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