Seconds out! Round One.... if anyone reading this has ever been in a boxing ring you will know the feeling. You put your gloves up and move forward - and then you are on your own.
Boxing is a sport like no other and over the years Norfolk has produced some of best pound-for-pound fighters in the land.
From newcomers to grizzled journeymen, it is a sport which has helped to shape the lives of thousands of young men.
The Norwich Lads Club, run by the city police, opened almost a century ago. It was the first of its kind in the world. Boxing was high on the agenda, aim to teach fitness, self-discipline and sportsmanship - and juvenile crime was almost wiped out as a result.
Today the man in the sporting spotlight is big-hearted Sam Sexton, the latest boxer from Norfolk to become a British champion. An incredible achievement.
And he is following in the footsteps of some top Norfolk boxers.
Let's start with Jem Mace. He has strong claims to be the world's first sporting superstar. He made a fortune - and lost a fortune.
Born at Beeston, near Litcham, in 1831 young Jem never went to school. He worked around Norfolk and Suffolk as a travelling smith with his dad, and his best friends were the gipsies they met on the road.
Jem went to Wells, worked as a cabinet maker, and was taught to play the fiddle by a chap called Fox in the pub The Green Dragon.
And so it came to be that Jem, just 18, was playing his fiddle in Great Yarmouth when three burly, drunken sailors smashed it out of devilment. They lived to regret it.
Two were knocked out. The third fled. A crowd cheered and Jem was on his way to becoming the best boxer in the world.
He became a prize fighter in the circus and ended up in Norwich where he became a local hero.
It was the hardest man in Norwich at the time, Jack 'Licker' Pratt who taught him a lesson. He gave young upstart a hiding but for the return fight on Mousehold, Jem pickled his fists with horseradish, whisky and hedgehog fat.
Pratt was licked.
Trouble was, Jem had a reputation for hard living which was often his downfall. He had a troubled love life and he loved drink.
He ran The White Swan in Norwich before finally heading off to London. Often on the move from the police because of his antics, he went off to America where he took on Tom Allen for the first championship of the world - and won.
Our Jem was an American hero. Then New York gangsters threatened to kill him so he was on the move again. He ended up in Australia where he schooled a golden generation of boxers.
He was the first world sporting superstar. But Jem died, a penniless busker, on a Jarrow 'Pit Heap' in 1910, aged 79.
Jem was way before my time - but I was privileged and honoured to have personally known the second of the great Norfolk boxers I am celebrating this week: Arthur 'Ginger' Sadd – one of the greatest and best-loved boxers Norwich has ever produced.
Just imagine this today: the boy from Oak Street was a professional boxer from 1931 to 1951. He had no fewer than 216 fights, winning 158 of them.
He was described in the 1930s as 'a cool, calculating boxer with a nimble brain and twinkling feet'.
Just before the start of the war he narrowly lost on points when he fought Jock 'The Rochdale Thunderbolt' McAvoy in Manchester for the British middleweight championship.
And although he lost, more than 2,000 people lined Dereham Road cheering and clapping Ginger as he returned home.
He worked as a lorry driver with Archie King in Norwich when he retired from the ring but he and his brother Dick coached hundreds of youngsters at Norwich Lads Club.
Ginger and Dick were gentlemen and many had good reason to thank them.
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