Jeff The Basta

Let me tell you about the Basta.

‘Basta’ in Italian means ‘Enough’, or ‘That’s it’, or ‘Stop it’.

He was the best box fighter ever. If you never heard about him is because the kind of boxing he was doing is not showed in the TV.

He was fighting for the Mafia.

This kind of old fashion Italian Mafia expatriated in the US some hundreds of years ago.

Those one who still like to speak Italian only while they are cooking.

He was a lost kid. Once. Then he became a lost man.

He found shelter in a boxing gym basement. And he hided there for a while. Like ten years.

And when he opened the door, well, he was the best fighter ever.

The fact is that for like ten years the only diversions he had were two: looking through the window, at the basement level, and so watching shoes and gaits, or looking though the keyhole: boxers.

And learning how to jump the rope watching inside his feelings, and fighting against his own shadow.

He saved my life continuously for more then ten years.

And then I dropped him.

Our story is quite complicated, but I’m willing to tell you in details.

Let’s start from the beginning.

I was still studying when I met him.

He was still trying to understand the world around him. But he gave up suddenly. Because being the best fighter ever was the rest of the world to understand him.

Anyway, Basta was not his real name, he just got it after the first fight.

All the fighters waited for the first match to have a name. It was their baptism.

No boxer was called with is name before the baptism. The first official fight. And the name was given by the crowd.

And because Basta was almost killing his opponent, the crowd started to say: ‘Enough!’, and ‘Stop it’...and because he was not stopping, then they tried in Italian: “Basta!”.