Why I Love Fighting

"People see a lot of times fighting as an ugly thing, as a thing that denigrates the human body...in reality you see fighting in everything...everything's fighting, it doesn't matter what it is...to wake up in the morning, to get out of bed is a fight...fighting is actually the best thing a man can have in his soul."
---Renzo Gracie, as a guest on 60 Minutes

It's the name of the blog as well as the first post, so I suppose I should explain exactly why it is that I love fighting. It's a complex and slightly misleading question in that it warrants some semantic clarification. I don't love street fighting, or general violence, or people getting hurt without purpose or structure, nor is any of the aforementioned the focus of this or any other blog post.  What I mean is that I love martial arts in all of the various incarnations it may manifest in. Both of my parents were lifelong martial artists, and as you can imagine I grew up in a household that fostered the ideals that go along with such endeavors. My father was a more active martial artist, having attained a black belt in Shotokan karate, and several other high level belts in disciplines such as wing chun, kung-fu, and others.  It's in the blood. My father died before Mixed Martial Arts gained the status it now occupies, and we never got to have so much as a discussion about what is now the only sport that I watch, the best sport that there is.  It will always be a regret.

Nevertheless, I've been a politician thus far and have danced around the original question. So why do I love fighting? Fighting is, as Renzo Gracie stated, in everything that I do, every day of the week. As a concept it dictates my consciousness when I don't feel strong enough to deal with something. In fact, I find myself able to handle difficult obstacles when I think of them as fights. For whatever reason the idea of a challenge is quite unmotivating, but the idea of a fight gets my blood pumping. Applying that paradigm to the difficulties of life gets me ready, it gets me motivated, it gets me in the frame of mind I need to move forward.

As a sport, MMA is the only sport that matters, the only complete sport insomuch as a sport is, at heart, a competitive endeavor.  That is not to step on other sports (not so explicitly anyhow), but a man who can get a fastball past the bat of another man is simply better at a given skill, one that doesn't matter in any context outside of a baseball game.  Fighting is different. Fighting is something that we all do, whether in the philosophical context mentioned above, or in the literal sense, we are all fighters. Even the baseball player struggling through his game is a fighter. Fighting is the state of mind that allows victory in all other sports, and the physical manifestation of that spirit represents the domination of one human being over another.  To simplify, you can run faster than me, or hit a better jump shot than me, who the fuck cares? If you can't stop me from taking you off your feet and holding you life in my hands, than nothing else matters. Now in a professional sense this is seen in what former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin has called "human chess", beautiful violence when it's done correctly.

So this is another MMA blog, one of countless others, but one I hope will hold a little distinction in that it's not about stats, it's not about saying outrageous things, but it's about the sport and the business of MMA, a sport in which I find true beauty, and the only sport that matters to me.

More to come....