{"id":266,"date":"2005-12-09T01:06:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-09T07:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=266"},"modified":"2005-12-09T01:06:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T07:06:00","slug":"up-close-and-personal-with-nick-durandt-south-african-boxing-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/up-close-and-personal-with-nick-durandt-south-african-boxing-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Up close and personal with Nick Durandt, South African boxing legend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
2005-12-03 Nick Durandt Close Up<\/a>
Originally uploaded by royblumenthal<\/a>. <\/span><\/div>\n

So it’s no secret that my girlfriend S is doing some serious boxing training at Nick Durandt’s Boxing World. And every now and then I go and sit on the sidelines with my palmtop and do drawings.<\/p>\n

So it’s Saturday, and Nick’s there. And he hasn’t met me before. And I walk up to him and go, ‘Hey Nick. I’m Roy. S’s boyfriend. Can I take a pic of you on my cellphone as reference? I wanna do a sketch of you?’<\/p>\n

He’s no stranger to photos. In his office, there’s a snap of him with Joe Frazier (signed), and another of him with Don King (signed), and another of him and Madiba (signed).<\/p>\n

He looks at me as though I’m a punching bag, and he’s working out what size gloves to hit me with. ‘Sure,’ he says, and I snap a pic.<\/p>\n

And I sit on the couch while S gets into the ring with Evans and spars lightly. I draw. And Damien<\/a>, Nick’s kid comes to see what I’m up to.<\/p>\n

‘Can I give you some advice?’ he asks.<\/p>\n

He’s 14 years old. And S says he whacks the punch bag like a pro. I say, ‘Absolutely.’<\/p>\n

\"2005-11-12<\/a>
He says, ‘My dad normally wears the hat much lower on his forehead.’<\/p>\n

So I make an adjustment and show him.<\/p>\n

‘Ya. That’s it.’<\/p>\n

He’s going to be a cricketer when he grows up. (His mom doesn’t want him to box. But he still trains anyway.)<\/p>\n

I show Nick. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Not bad.’ I show him the pics I’ve done of Evans<\/a> and Mr Jones<\/a>. ‘Not bad,’ he says. ‘Do you do action pictures? I’ve got a few photos. I’ll bring them. Maybe you can come round and do a few. We could sell them at fights. Fans dig this sort of thing.’<\/p>\n

In the ring, S catches Evans on the side of the head, and he drops like a stone. Of course, she didn’t ‘catch’ him, and he didn’t realllllly drop. He’s just humouring her.<\/p>\n

Oh. Hang on. On second thoughts, maybe she did take him out. I’d better be careful what I say! She’s a machine!<\/p>\n

Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2005-12-03 Nick Durandt Close UpOriginally uploaded by royblumenthal. So it’s no secret that my girlfriend S is doing some serious boxing training at Nick Durandt’s Boxing World. And every now and then I go and sit on the sidelines with …<\/p>\n

Up close and personal with Nick Durandt, South African boxing legend<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-4i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}