A question has been nagging me, gnawing at me since I’ve been doing fight analysis. While I love analyzing fights from a technical perspective, there is something deeper that has drawn me to martial arts throughout my life. I began incoherently rambling a semblance of an article musing on this question, which you can find at the end of this article.
I realized that trying to get to the bottom of this would require a deeper investigation than simply putting my feelings and experiences down on paper, as effective of a method as this may be. So I decided to take a different route in answering the question:
Why do human’s love fighting? What makes it such an integral and eternal aspect of the human experience?
Aside of course from any evolutionary theory you might want to propose, there is something deeply human and spiritual about fighting; surmounting, expression in a violent dance with another. Rather than look at more fights and fighter interviews, I will delve into the things that capture the essence of fighting: movies, books, manga, tv shows, even instructionals. Pieces of culture that seek to capture the very essence of martial arts.
I will be studying the piece itself, what we can take from it in a practical sense, and most importantly, how it captures this vital essence.
I would love for this to be a collaborative venture, akin to a book club, so I will announce what pieces I will be delving into a fair amount of time before the release of the episode so you send any questions, spur discussions in the comment sections, and enjoy these pieces for yourself as well. Full episodes will be available to paid subscribers of the Substack, and there will be a short free preview for the free subscribers. The more support I have, the more time I can utilize for in depth and interesting projects such as this.
Episode 1 will be detailing heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey’s seminal work, Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense. If you do not yet have the book, I highly recommend getting because it is a wonderfully easy and intriguing read, and allow for more informed discussions once these episodes drop (you can find it pretty easily on Amazon or most major book retailers). This first episode will be dropping on Saturday, October 10th. I expect to see you there, feel free to send me any questions in the comments of this Substack post, or associated posts on Instagram, YouTube, or X/Twitter.
Thank you as always for the support, and I look forward to seeing you there, God Bless you all!
Appendix
Why is fighting so human? What does it mean for a fighter to speak through their fighting? Many times have we seen a fighter awkward on the mic, Nick Diaz a prime example, but we understand who they are so clearly when they fight. their style paints a better picture of who they are at the core of their being than they could ever possibly tell us in words. Why is this? Why is fighting so fundamental to the human experience.
Compare fighting to something like football. football is a beautiful sport. Perhaps no other endeavor more perfectly encapsulates the simulation of war. The head coach as the general. the quarterback an avatar of Achilles. It paints a beautiful, cordial picture of war with an American coat of paint. However, is there a real expression to football? In subtle ways, absolutely. There’s variants of quarterbacks. Bombers, scramblers, etc. But each position favors a certain set of athletic capabilities. If you do not meet a threshold of athletic ability, forget about competing at the highest level. I respect this, i do, but football is perhaps too esoteric in its construction to truly allow for one’s personality to shine through in their play style. At least, when compared to the pure art of fighting.
It took many steps to get from war to football. Fighting on the other hand, is as old as time. Its first professional roots are perhaps in pankration, the Ancient Greek expression of mixed martial arts, but the simple idea of fighting another human being is as old as time itself. It is in our blood to fight. Blood memory is real, and it is expressed no more purely than in the art of fisticuffs.
Fighting and dancing are both the most human arts Interconnected The posture of the artist shows the nervous system the body is tapping into in order to succeed Fighting is sympathetic. Based on survival. All your vitals are guarded as you protect your livelihood, and damage that of the opponents. Each aiming for solar plexus, chin, livers, ribs. You want to break and maim their body, and prevent the other from doing that to you. Limbs are in positions to defend and absorb, or, in different styles, be maximally evasive. You are defending or avoiding. Tapping into an ancestral need to survive, what it was like to be wired out of your mind at all time while your life hangs in the balance. Fighting is reactionary. There can be a gameplan but your opponent is acting against you, so you can only prepare in very specific ways. A fight between two people can look a million different ways. The best gameplans look like they are not trying, but that they have every possible answer to what an opponent might be doing.
The best dancing is done in the opposite form. Proud chests, outstretched limbs. Dancing is the fact of literally baring your heart to the world. Exposing your gut to criticism. Your body is on display. Your body seeks to outwardly present the soul and its wants, its connection to the divine and beauty. Unfettered with survival. It is living embodied. It is the manifestation of a soul unburdened, or, in a moment, represents the unburdening of the soul. Dancing is working in tandem with a partner. There is no randomness. There is an ideal form of what you are trying to do, and you are trying to live up to it. A dance can look a million different ways too, but there is something of an ideal form that each dancer is trying to achieve. It is hyper structured but looks almost the opposite when done at its best.
Both athletes black out when its time to compete to an extent.