Lord of the Ring

It's not an easy life, boxing. For one thing, your medical insurance premiums go through the roof.

And it's even worse when you're about three and a half feet tall. Not that I'm complaining. I mean, I chose this life. After Uncle Bilbo retired injured and left me his padded vest and gloves, his trainer – my trainer now, old Gandalf – spent about an hour going through the minutiae of several contracts before finding a clause that permitted him to sign me on mid-season to replace my uncle. And it was important, of course; Uncle Bilbo had got himself a running spot on the Mt. Doom International Tournament, and with him injured Mordor would have been the uncontested world featherweight boxing champions. So, really, it was up to me to defend the national honour. (Gandalf himself was a foreigner; for him it was a personal vendetta with the Mordor trainer, one Sauron).

This isn't to say that it was easy, of course. First he had to persuade the Boxing Federation that I could legally take my uncle's place and his accumulated score so far in the tournament – not an easy task, he had to call together a council headed by the boxing league president, Elrond. This was made rather tricker by the fact that on the way, at Weathertop, a stone had turned under my foot and I'd pulled a muscle in my shoulder trying to steady myself. Fortunately, Elrond's household included an excellent biokineticist and they soon had my shoulder working again (though it's likely to contiue giving me problems throughout my life now). And then, of course, we had that trouble at the pass; it was snowed over and so we had to take the bus the long way around. And then when we get there, they've got some kind of specieist policies that only the boxer and his trainer are allowed in and both have to be the same species, which cut poor Gandalf out. I ended up taking Sam with me for moral support, and everyone else had to face the terrors of the paid seats (I'm told the crowd was pretty rowdy). All we had to face was the mosquitos at that bit of marshy ground just outside (there must be thousands of mosquito corpses there) and a humungous spider on the wall. Despite what Sam may tell you, I did not faint on seeing the spider, and I did not have to be carried in by orcs as a result.

Still, after all the trouble we had getting there, the fight itself was kind of anticlimactic. Gollum was a tough opponent, and at one point I seriously thought he was going to win the fight; but I managed to knock him down for the count in round three without taking too much damage. I'll admit I hit him hard enough to break a finger, and I ached all over the next morning, but those were the only injuries I took.

Gandalf tells me that some fellow called 'Tolkien' bought the rights to the story. Of course, he exaggerated it a bit.

Find more by Casey Callaghan in the Author Index.

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