Fighting reveals the truism that Kimmel is bent on and which I agree with, that manhood, that endless test, is a sham, an illusion of sorts; because when you start fighting, you realize there’s never an end to it, there’s always somebody better—stronger, faster, bigger, younger, whatever, something. Brandon told me how he used to destroy people when street fighting, and that when he walked into Pat’s, he thought, There’s nobody who can fight me at 155 pounds (his weight class), and then he ran into Jens Pulver. A lot of these guys were street-fighting terrors, but when they get in the cage or boxing ring against strong, trained guys, they are the bottom of the barrel, because there are monsters out there. The quest to be the toughest in the world is an empty quest, and fighters realize that pretty quickly, I think. Muhammad Ali might have been one of the greatest strikers in history, but when he and Frazier got into a prefight scuffle, they ended up on the ground, rolling around ineffectually. You might be the world champ in your weight class, but a decent guy twenty pounds heavier will give you fits. There’s always someone out there who can beat you. It’s about being the best you can be, bringing yourself closer to the perfect version.
Of course, there’s a manhood aspect to it—we want to know ourselves under stress, in pain and in adversity—we want to know if we are game. If you don’t think gameness is a critical concept in our culture, think about the game test, in which they fight a dog, and when he’s exhausted send a fresh dog at him to see what he’ll do. Now think about every single climactic fight scene in every action movie: The hero fights, starts getting beat, looks like he’s about to lose; and then he demonstrates pure gameness and comes back hard and wins the fight. Every damn time. It’s for dramatic tension, but also more: It’s satisfying because he’s shown that he’s game, he’s proved himself worthy of our love. He’s a worthy member of our pack.
Manhood, or the pursuit of masculinity, is really about the “hunter” virtues that had survival value for prehistoric man: strength and speed, courage and loyalty, skill—all things that have obvious survival value in the extreme conditions in which Homo sapiens first eked out existence. It wasn’t that long ago. Society and technology have changed, but biology hasn’t, at least not as much. You still want to see gameness in your friends, your family, your leaders, the men you hunt with and who protect you from wild animals—the old savage gods. As man mastered animals, those hunter virtues became the virtues of the warrior, as interspecies aggression in the form of warfare came to dominate human activity.
As far as watching fighting goes, the same rules apply: We are drawn to the spectacle of violence for hereditary, genetic reasons, but here, too, I think there is something more, and it’s not easily accessible—you have to watch a thousand bad or mediocre or even good fights before you see one that is truly great, truly transcendent. In Reading the Fights, a collection of essays, Ronald Levao writes:
These are forces played out on the physical stage—the raised white canvas is a blank and basic platea—which make it possible to see great fighters as great artists, however terrible their symbolic systems. It may be, and perhaps should be, difficult to accept the notion that a prizefighter’s work merits the same kind of attention we lavish on an artist’s, but once we begin attending to and describing what he does in the ring, it becomes increasingly difficult to refuse the expenditure. The fighter creates a style in a world of risk and opportunity. His disciplined body assumes the essential postures of the mind: aggressive and defensive, elusively graceful with its shifts of direction, or struggling with all its stylistic resources against a resistant but, until the very end, alterable reality. A great fighter redefines the possible.
Fight fans keep watching, hoping for the great one, that fight that transcends and becomes art.
Down in Mexico, on the movie set, I met muay Thai legend Rob Kaman. He was the real thing—lived in Thailand for years and years, fought all over the world. He’s the guy who should have written this book. He was a great champion and among the very best in the world in his day. A friend of Stefanos’s, he was a hard-faced Dutchman in his mid-forties, but he had that glorious human warmth that the great Thai fighters had, a real friendliness, lack of ego, and compassion. We talked a few times, and he said to me, “When I stopped fighting, I thought I could start living—drinking and partying—but I found that wasn’t the case.” I felt the same way: The minute I pulled out of the fight, even though I had the time to write, I felt bereft of purpose. Why work out? Now what do I do? Rory said he felt pure when he got close to a fight, and I know what he meant—there’s a refreshing purity of purpose.
I spoke with an old professor of mine, Gregory Nagy—a leading classical scholar—and he told me that the athlete in antiquity underwent a spiritual transformation during competition. It can happen only if the athlete is connected to something bigger than him- or herself. I was reminded of Zé Mario in Brazil, who said that after training for five months, he could feel the presence of God in a fight. Greg said that for the ancient Greeks, when the athlete is in the highest moment of competition, when he is in his “deep waters,” he comes face to face with divinity—and is reborn on the other side. But in order to achieve that, the fighter has to be connected to the sacred somehow; otherwise, it’s just games.
I examine my heart for fear and don’t find any. If I found any fear, I would force myself to go straight at it; but without fear I have to wonder what the point is, because I’m not going pro. If I were ten years younger and where I am right now, maybe I would take two years and find a gym and live there and see what happens, but I am thirty-one. Is it time to move on? I wonder if getting out of fighting will be as easy as I think. Is there something wrong with really enjoying getting hit?
But there is something else. There is a quality around these men, the good fighters I’ve met—they are among the best people I know. Kirik, Virgil, Andre, Zé, Rodrigo, Master Chen, Pat, and Apidej are some of the best examples of humanity I can think of. They’ve been face to face with divinity—they’ve swum deep waters—and been reborn in the fight.
These men who have fought, and who really understand what it’s about, have left their egos behind, in the tough-guy sense. The pressure of proving masculinity has been removed. You’re more interested in seeing if your skills are better (like Jens said in Japan) than your opponent’s than whether you are a man or not. It’s a form of enlightenment; lack of fear leads to nobility of character. Not all fighters develop like this, but a surprising number do; the really good ones seem to. They stop street fighting, because untrained men don’t interest them. Pat said he used to walk through the mall and feel like a shark among seals. And that power, in the great fighters, breeds restraint, understanding, wisdom—even gentleness, except when in the ring. I’ve seen it in different corners of the world, in totally different cultures. That’s the other part of the fighter’s heart.
Having a fighter’s heart, having gameness, is about knowing yourself and not being afraid of losing. You become a better version of yourself. Nobility is a by-product of that attitude, just like love is a byproduct of aggression.
Kimmel gets a little personal when he writes about “a new subgenre of travel literature” where “the journeyman/writer/hero” is “testing manhood in a Land Rover.” He talks about that kind of literature as a way to prove masculinity and to escape the dangerously feminine city, and his voice is dripping with sarcasm. I’d never talk that way to him.
Luckily, I can easily refute that statement. I do things out of a genuine interest, a desire for knowledge, a deep and abiding curiosity that I think is the birthright, the God-given duty, of a citizen of the world.
You could argue that I have just been dabbling—fighting got me a book deal. I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a fight writer for the rest of my life. But I’m not done with fighting, I know that. I doubt I ever will be, completely. It’s been six years and seven continents since I first fought in Thailand, and although I’m desperate for a break, I know I’ll be back in a gym s
omewhere, getting pounded on, before too long.
Cormac McCarthy wrote a book called Blood Meridian in which the character of the judge makes an argument that war is the most essential of human activities. He starts by saying that men are born for games, and that everybody, even children, know that “play is nobler than work.” If that is true, says the judge, then what changes the quality of the game but the stakes? And what could be a more valuable stake than your life? So war, the game you play with your life, is the greatest of human endeavors.
In that same argument the judge says that “war is God” because it is the test of wills between two parties. Moral law is subjective, and man must submit before the “higher court,” which will provide a conclusive decision. In a fight, the truth will out.
When I read this, it really bothered me, and I spent a few minutes reading and rereading the argument. And then I saw the fatal flaw in the judge’s logic, and read on with an easy mind.
I do not believe that men were meant for games, that that is their highest purpose. Work is nobler than play. I believe that men were meant for work, that their highest calling is to build, not destroy or even protect. Learning to fight, trying to embody the virtues of the hunter and warrior—these things are useful and important, even essential. But don’t be content with being a warrior, be a builder as well. Make something. The true calling of man, real manhood, is about creation, not destruction, and everyone secretly knows it.
AFTERWORD
I finished A Fighter’s Heart in 2005, just as the first season of The Ultimate Fighter was premiering on Spike TV. I didn’t follow the show, but looking back from 2007, that was a watershed moment for MMA—the free fights catapulted MMA toward the rest of America. When I started the book, the UFC and MMA were still “under the radar,” albeit just barely. Now we can safely say that the whole shebang has gone mainstream. Billboard advertisements are everywhere; in 2006, the UFC made an estimated $220 million in pay-per-view. The fights are covered by Yahoo!, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated, although they don’t quite understand what they’re watching. Mainstream media doesn’t quite get it, not yet, but they know there is a big story and a lot of interest and enthusiasm. Scott Nelson and Kirik Jenness are now highly pursued consultants, and they’re trying to decide who to sell out to, and when. If I had been writing later, I certainly would have addressed this sudden surge in popularity, the arrival of an idea whose time has come. MMA is a real and deep sport, it’s been around forever (pankration —boxing and wrestling combined—was the original Olympic main draw), and finally it’s coming back. The main reason MMA is so exciting is that it is developing so quickly and evolving from year to year. It’s like watching boxing in the 1920s, in boxing’s heyday—when a fighter would come up who could do something totally new, like fight moving backward—and he would stand the fight world on its head. MMA is like that now, the strikers are evolving; they go to the body to open up the head in ways they didn’t do two years ago; and if you’re not a BJJ black belt with excellent wrestling skills you’re going to get murdered. The depth in the lower weight classes is truly staggering. What makes the fights so exciting is the evolution of the sport, the constant newness. Upsets abound, the game evolves all the time. The world is watching, maybe without knowing why.
I had an interesting time with the small amount of mainstream media I dealt with. Most of it was positive. I did The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who was friendly but we didn’t get into anything meaty; but it sure sold some books. I found that quite a few women loved the book, including Martha MacCallum on FOX, and an all female morning radio show in New York.
Some people would talk about fighting without ever having really thought about it; and sometimes I got through, sometimes I didn’t. It was telling as to what interviewer got hung up on “Harvard.”
Wherever I went, I would hear again and again, “But it’s so dangerous.” Gradually a response started forming in my mind.
I had finished the book when the Winter Olympics was on TV, and as I watched the games I thought Man, every sport on here is more dangerous than fighting. The downhill skiing, the bobsled, the luge, ski-jumping . . . you’re looking at impacts of twenty or forty-five miles per hour into snow and ice and trees. As an EMT, there was something I learned about called “Mechanism of Injury,” which just meant “how did it happen?” It means, if you came to a car accident and the fender was scraped, and the driver had a bruised chest, you wouldn’t worry too much. The impact hadn’t been so great, the mechanism didn’t look too significant. Now, if you came on that same driver with the same bruised chest, only now the car is completely totaled, has flipped over twenty times and looks like a pretzel—well, that guy is going to the hospital in an ambulance, because that is a much more scary mechanism of injury. With downhill skiing or ski jumping, the mechanism is much more significant than a punch or a kick—a body-weight impact at forty-five miles per hour is horrifically dangerous. So pretty much every sport in the Winter Olympics was more dangerous than fighting. So what was the problem?
The problem people have is that hurting someone is the goal—not scoring points or getting quickly down a mountain. The whole point is inflicting damage. And that is a moral hole, that is unstable ground. Hopefully, I answered that question, or at least some part of it, in the last chapter.
Recently at a book signing, someone asked me about brain damage and concussions, and all the new data. For those that don’t know or don’t believe, check out www.concussioncrisis.com, and if you train, it’ll scare the pants off you. Even slight concussions are bad for you, and especially bad is not taking time to recover—getting hit and going back into the game or the ring, “shaking it off,” and getting back in there.
So why do we do it? Especially, those of us who aren’t going to be big-time professional fighters, with opportunities to make millions? Why do we keep sparring and fighting when we KNOW how bad it is for us? I think the answer lies somewhere in the idea that you pay a price for anything you love. It’s worth it. That’s the short answer. It’s why I used to smoke cigarettes. Sure, I knew they were bad for me. I knew they were killing me; but fuck the future. I was concerned with the present, and “right now” I enjoyed them immensely. Eventually I quit because I stopped enjoying them, but that’s a different story.
I know that sparring and fighting, getting smashed in the head and going home with a two-day splitting headache is bad—but I don’t care, or I don’t care enough. It makes my life better. Sparring gives me great joy (although I don’t do it that often anymore—I am, after all, a writer not a fighter). Sparring still makes me feel as alive as anything ever did, completely aware and in the moment. It’s a joy. Of course, the payment is gradual, imperceptible, and extracted over time. Maybe I wouldn’t be so blase if I knew what was coming . . . but I’d like to think I still would do what I do. Every love can be merciless.
Everyone asks me if I’m planning on fighting again. Maybe. I still train, I rarely drink. But I need a ground game before I consider it; most BJJ places won’t hear of their students fighting MMA until they’re a purple belt or higher. I roll here and there, and I box often and spar a few times a month. We’ll see. I don’t have anything to prove, so I’m not interested in fighting until my ground game is legitimate.
The book has done pretty well, although I had friends who thought it was going to be a difficult sell because they thought that fight fans don’t buy books. Of course, that’s dead wrong; fight fans will read anything that’s about the subject and fighters they’re interested in. Fight fans read so much badly written stuff about their sport that they are dying for something that takes them seriously.
Pretty much everyone I ever met who trains and fights, or watches fighting, has these same thoughts, the same questions. We all want to have a serious discussion.
I wrote this book for us. Thanks for reading.
—Sam Sheridan
Los Angeles
August 25, 2007
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
> Thanks . . .
Harvard: Tommy Rawson, Gregory Nagy
Thailand: Apidej Sit-Hirun, John Deroy, Anthony Lin, Waring Partridge, Philip Wong, Bart Van Der Molen, Tim CEK, Ike X, Yarpie, Judy Blair, Merit, Daniel Boone, Ajahn Suthep, Phraratha Panyavudo (Vayagool), Blue, Neungsiam, Beya, Yak, Kum, Coke
Myanmar: Truth, Nobility, the YMCA in Yangon
Iowa: Pat Miletich, Rory Markham, Rob Lawler, Sam Hogar, Tim Sylvia, Brandon Adamson, Marshall Blevins, Spencer Fisher, Justin Brown, Ben Lowy, Josh Howit, Tony Fryklund, Ryan McGivern, Ben Rothwell
Brazil: Mario Sperry, Murilo Bustamante, Rodrigo Nogueira, Gustavo “Bomba” Toledo, Scott Nelson, Tony Desouza, Gabrielle Bermudez, Mariana de Faria Benchimol, Olavo Abreu, Carlos Lemos Jr., Paulo Filho, João da Silva, my tutor João Casaes, Matt Mochary, Darryl Gholar, Denis Martins, Farés el Dahdah
Japan: Hikari Ohta, Luis Alves, Luis Dórea, Amaury Bitetti, Marco Bruschelli, Danillo Villefort, Roland Kelts, Bebeo, Turi Altavilla
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