Lotto Arena, Antwerp — September 2022 Before the gloves. Before the ring. Before the crowd even knows his name tonight. The cutman's hands move with the precision of a surgeon and the tenderness of someone who has done this a thousand times. Hadi Melloul sits still, eyes closed, surrendering to the ritual. The bandages wrap and protect what the fight will later test. This was my first night in a boxing locker room. I had never seen this before — the care, the silence, the almost sacred preparation of a fighter's hands. These hands that will throw punches, absorb punishment, and carry the weight of years of training into a few rounds under the lights. Layered over this moment, echoes of the same night — the same man, the same room, a different second. Memory does not move in straight lines. This image started everything.