Todd Kuhnhausen's left eye looked like a tenderized steak.It was puffy and purple and outlined with blood that dripped from a cut, the remnants of what will go in the record books as a "technical draw."
That's what they call it when a fight is stopped by the ringside doctor before going three full rounds. That is what they called it Saturday night as professional boxing came to the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds.
Kuhnhausen, 41, has made his living for the past 22 years at Georgia-Pacific. He has lived in the Vancouver area his entire life. He has been married to Kim for 18 years, and together they have had three daughters.
It's a perfectly normal, upstanding life. Heck, Kuhnhausen even coaches youth soccer.
But there is something that lurks deep in the heart of men, and for Kuhnhausen, that something led him to professional boxing, nearly two decades after his amateur career ended.
"I do it to keep in shape, and to do something I love," Kuhnhausen said, after his professional record dropped to 0-3-1. "Just the competition.
"I don't mind getting hit. I took some good shots but kept coming."
And that, as much as anything, explains why Kuhnhausen climbed into the ring against Merlin LaDue of Butte, Mont. That explains why he kept moving forward, testing his will as much as his skill, until the fight was stopped.
It's a fascinating game, this boxing. A battle of fortitude that, these days, is made to look positively civilized by the popularity of Mixed Martial Arts.
For decades, people have called for the abolition of boxing, claiming it is barbaric and dangerous and Philistine. For decades, boxing has survived, even when it is bereft of charismatic stars to capture the attention of the general public.
The most public presentations of the endeavor are found in the glitzy casinos of Las Vegas, with million-dollar purses and gazillion-dollar pay-per-view packages.
But the soul of the sport can be found here, in what promoter Michael Petrovich claimed is Washington's first professional card in more than a decade to be held outside a casino.
When asked how many people would need to show up to make Saturday's six-bout event worth his while, Petrovich said, "We're hoping for 2,000."
He likely got less than 1,000.
And one of those was Kuhnhausen's wife, watching her husband earn what he said was between $800 and $1,200 for the light-heavyweight fight.
"I'm letting him follow his dream," Kim Kuhnhausen said. "He can't stand not to be in the ring, the adrenaline."
But how can she stand it? How can she live with watching the welts be inflicted, the eyes being tenderized?
"It's very hard," Kim said. "I can't sleep for about two weeks before a fight.
"I just hope that he wins; that's all I'm hoping for. He's not a happy person for a couple days when he loses."
There's no telling how happy Kuhnhausen will be today, following a technical draw. The eyes will be puffy and the body will be sore.
But you can't help but think the spirit will be fulfilled.
"I'm thinking about everything I have to do out there, all the training I've done to get to this point," Kuhnhausen said. "The fight is the easy part.
"They don't let you get hurt too bad. Look at me, I got a cut. It will heal."
Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-759-8059, or online at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbiantalk.com/read/blogs/
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