Another great post of yours.

I've been an amateur boxer for a long time. I had a chance to fight professionally but rejected it out of hand. 1) I was way too old to start; and 2) My day job pays well and involves using my brain.

I started as a bodybuilder in a boxing gym who got talked into training by an ex-pro (vice Europameister). I went from shadow boxing to body sparring to full sparring to hard sparring with professional fighters.

Each step up that ladder was a massive step up in required fitness - and then a phase of learning to relax at that next level. Talking to my friends who are professional fighters (or were) it is the same as you move up to fighting professionally at low levels and then up to the top where people like Canelo Alvarez and Oleksander Usyk reside. Their level of fitness and stress control (e.g. letting your arms be loose between punches, only tensing your fist when you punch) while 10s of thousands of people are literally screaming for blood is otherworldly.