Lords of the Ring

At the U.S. Naval Academy, midshipmen learn the art of war, one punch at a time

The noise inside the steamy Naval Academy gym is deafening. In the stands, hundreds of plebes are dancing and cheering; a hundred more cling to the ropes at ringside, screaming for the teenage combatants inside the ring.

The faded blue canvas is spattered with the blood of a thousand fights before this one, and the two boxers are christening it anew at the Plebe Smoker, an annual boxing exhibition staged for first-year students who might want to join the Naval Academy's intramural boxing team. Just five weeks ago, on Induction Day, these 1,200 first-year midshipmen, known as plebes, were nervous civilians, unshorn, undisciplined, untested. Now, after enduring the rigors of what is known at the academy as Plebe Summer, that July morning seems like a lifetime ago.

The plebes who get in the ring on this August evening fight less like boxers than like caged beasts, with no subtlety or skill. One dances all over like a maniac, another literally falls down as he throws a wild punch. The young man in the gold jersey lands a right, spraying more blood and sweat onto the canvas. The young man in blue is knocked to the mat, hopping back up instantly, confusion and surprise in his eyes. At the end of a standing eight count, he lunges back at his opponent, seeking revenge.

Knock him out, cry the plebes, exploding with the pent-up stress of weeks of Naval Academy discipline and deprivation. Kill him.

The fighters in the ring might like to grant them their wish, but they don't know how. They have plenty of heart, but no art. Their punches come in predictable, slow, straight patterns -- left-right, left-right, left-right. The rounds are only one minute long, but in between rounds the fighters lean on the stakes in their corners, their bodies heaving and glossy with sweat. Their cornermen are shouting at them, "Jab! Jab! Jab!" But the boxers can't comply with an order they don't understand.

It is a sight that fills Tom Virgets, the ultimate authority on Naval Academy boxing, with disgust. "This is evenly matched," he snorts as he watches two fighters lumber around the ring. "They both suck."

Then 18-year-old Frank Hernandez takes the ring and shows Virgets and the crowd what 156 pounds of mobilized muscle can do. Not that the baby-faced Hernandez looks all that intimidating. He's only 5 feet 7, and his protective headgear squeezes his already puffy cheeks into little balls of fat. Yet moments after the bell rings, it's clear that his opponent, Nathan Penka, is outmatched. Hernandez pops Penka with range-finding jabs. He slips a punch and gets in close, digging his fists into Penka with crosses and hooks and uppercuts delivered in lightning combinations.

"He's boxed before," says a pugilistic veteran in the stands. "He moves from the hips."

Hernandez hasn't really boxed before, not seriously. But he does move from the hips: when he dodges a punch, when he sends his fist crashing into Penka's gut. It is a performance that makes an immediate impression on Jim McNally, Navy's head boxing coach. This kid has talent, McNally thinks, as he watches Hernandez tattoo Penka with punches. He could be a champion.

TO HEAR TOM VIRGETS tell it, his childhood in New Orleans was an endless series of fistfights with local kids and strung-out druggies from the methadone clinic down the block. He waxes nostalgic about those days. "I can remember going 20, 25 days in a fistfight," he says fondly.

At 52, the laid-back deputy physical education officer is in excellent shape, but not physically imposing. Virgets speaks with a gentle Louisiana lilt and smiles as if he and the person he is talking to are sharing an inside joke. Cross him, though, and he could punch you into the next time zone.

"All talent evolves through struggle," he says, and it is a fitting motto for a man who has trained the likes of Tommy "the Duke" Morrison, conqueror of George Foreman and co-star of "Rocky V," and Donovan "Razor" Ruddock, who fought Mike Tyson at the peak of his powers.

These days, Virgets doesn't work with that kind of talent. Instead of being hungry young street fighters, students at the Naval Academy are more likely to have graduated from high school with straight A's and 1300 scores on their SATs. Virgets doesn't begrudge them their academic achievement but says scholastic success is often accompanied by softness. They have no idea how to fight, let alone how to kill.

Yet the core mission of the Naval Academy is to turn these callow high achievers into military leaders who can act decisively in the heat of combat, who can kill without hesitation. Which is why boxing has come to occupy such a fundamental part of the curriculum at Annapolis. Navy is the only service academy that requires every man and woman to learn how to box.