It was a different pain. For someone plagued by ankle issues since a leg-shattering soccer injury in ’90, that represented an oh-sh*t moment.
It was sharp. It was jarringly diffuse, going beyond the standard ankle roll. And I was committed to ignore it, even though there was no friggin’ way I could.
Two thirty in the p.m. on Friday. Inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Me and a pal made our way to some unnecessarily wide-open seats for the pre-Mayweather/Maidana weigh-in extravaganza the day before their fight. From that vantage point, we watched 2 Chainz perform.
And from that vantage point we were ejected shortly thereafter.
Though the event was free, those close-up seats apparently were not.
So we scoured for available seats. None were to be found in the good spots. So to the back of the arena we walked. Back to Sections 216 and 218.
The aisles, those seats were taken. One, two deep. So, instead of asking people to get up, we walked up to an open row, found that cut through and made our way down between seats. I made it about three rows before … pain.
Think I said ouch 200 times while finishing my first beer of the day. A Dos Equis tallboy. I could not walk to concessions to get another one, so Freddie Morgan kindly did.
By the time he got back, the ankle was the size of a tennis ball.
By the time we got ready to leave after Money May made weight …
… it was the size of a slightly-discolored tennis ball.
Fuuuuuuuck.
Luckily, I’d unexplainedly brought an ankle brace in the luggage. Unluckily, it was a long haul back to the Excalibur to retrieve. Walk slowly, we did, meeting Zab Judah along the way.
Stop longly, we did, at a sports bar in MGM to grab a five-beer mini-sampler and bad-ass burger.
Numbed and tummy-filled, I was braced (no pun intended) for the 20-minute haul. With the brace, it felt better, and amply supported, even though I knew the thing was bad.
Sitting in the sportsbook led to a cab ride to Fremont.
Fremont meant a bit of uncomfortable Friday night time on my feet, but the pain had receded a bit.
By morning, I would have had to check black/blue on any census form for race based on my leg-skin hue.
By afternoon, it was propped up at the sports-book for the Derby.
By night, the end was near.
After standing as much as I could during the Mayweather/Maidana fight, it was relax, cab to plane for a 6:45 a.m. flight and fret over the feeling of pooling blood on my leg.
Monday brought X-rays.
Tuesday morning brought diagnosis: “No acute fracture. Old avulsion fracture.”
Translation: No surgery. No cast. Ice. Elevate. Anti-inflammatory pain killer. And no idea when I’d previously fractured my right ankle (the soccer injury was on my left) that could qualify as this injury being the re-aggravation of an earlier fracture. (Doc said it’s really just a severe sprain, and if Donovan McNabb could play a game on such an injury, I DAMN WELL could watch a Vegas prize fight).
The moral of the story: I’d be damned if I was going to go to the hospital during a 60-hour Vegas trip. I knew it wasn’t broken. Grin and bear it. These things are easy to do after you’ve had your skull cut open and stuck in a freezer for a few months.
Maybe I’d only have to work from my sofa with leg propped up for four or five of the next 7-10 days, but it’d have killed me to have missed that fight, yo.
What would I recommend you do in a similar situation? What I did. Because how else would you see these people posing with $1 million at Binion’s …
They are the reason I live with this pain. That, and knowing I was sober when I did it makes it borderline laughable.
I’ll just blame classism (for kicking us out of the seats) and politeness (for not asking people to get up so we could squeeze by) for everything and call it a day.
Oh, and silver linings: We sneaked out a side exit post-fight so I could gimp in low-crowd peace, thus missing that whole riot jawn.