Why We Fight (Fight Training June 2009)

There is purity in a fistfight.

You’re given a problem to solve – one or more opponents, all angry, all hungry. Your tools are your own body and the skills you’ve brought with you. There is no planning, no preparation. Only action and reaction. The stakes are not money or fame or a promotion. If you lose, you expect to die. When you’re faced with a choice between giving it everything or giving away everything, you have to know how far your body will go. How much pain you can take. How much effort it will take to throw a punch over and over. How long you can stay conscious with an arm around your throat.

A lot of people won’t understand why I take part in combat training that leaves me unable to see, unable to move. Sure, they say, self defense is important. But can’t you train karate in a dojo? Learn self-defense techniques without taking so much damage?

The simple truth of training martial arts is that a sparring match is not a fight. Karate skills are useless against five men with knives, or a bottle over the eyes. It doesn’t matter how hard you can kick if you get cornered in an alley by kids who have no interest in robbing you, don’t give a shit what’s in your pockets – they want blood for the sake of blood.

I know people who are devout pacifists. They believe that you can talk your way out of any situation, if you keep a cool head. That violence passes around some people and is attracted to others. That if you go out prepared for a fight, a fight will come to you, but if you walk the streets in a peaceful and loving state of mind, violence will go elsewhere.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Violence occurs to good, innocent people on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the rich or the poor parts of town because gangs with knives don’t respect residential zoning. Less than a month ago, a man named Luke Mitchell went to the aid of a kid being beaten up on Sydney Rd, Melbourne. The kid’s attackers ran away, and everyone thought that was the end of the affair. That is, until the two Thai attackers got in their car and followed Mr. Mitchell to a nearby 7-11, where they stabbed him to death in front of the 7-11 attendant. This happened about a kilometre from my house, between my place and the local shops.

I say again – bad shit happens to good people. There is no magical karmic balancer that lets you talk your way out of every situation. Unless you spend the rest of your life locked in a padded bunker, there’s a good chance random violence will come to you, or somebody you love. That’s when you’re faced with the choice.

So I do combat training that teaches no moves, no techniques, no tricks. Half of the purpose of this training is to illustrate just how unprepared the average person is for a fight; that, even as fit and strong as I am, I’d be lucky to stay on my feet for more than a minute in a real street brawl. It teaches you exactly how fast exhaustion sets in when you start grappling on the ground and it teaches how it’s almost impossible to defend against a hail of boots to the face. It might seem strange for me to say that such a huge proportion of this combat training is teaching me to just fucking run, but it’s that sort of mindset that might save my life.

The other half of the training is the discovery of physical limits.

Last night I lost fifteen fights in a row – and when I say “in a row,” I mean that as soon as I hit the ground, someone was pulling me to my feet and pushing me into the fists of my next opponent. Time enough between each fighter to catch a single breath, maybe two. I was shaking, stunned by repeated blows to the head. My chest ached from a high kick and my left eye was already purple and swollen. My legs were wet paper. Vomit pressed sour at the back of my throat. I couldn’t tell whether I was crying or whether it was sweat blurring my vision.

But I stood up anyway, ready to lose number sixteen. Because when it’s your life on the line, you fight until you’re physically unable to continue. You push back the fear and the voice at the back of your head whispering give up, give up, close your eyes, let it end. You bite down on the nausea and you force your bruised eyes open. Because I will not subject the people I love to a midnight visit from the police. I will not force them to watch me breathe through a tube with my face mashed and unrecognisable. I will not fail my friends, or myself.

You have to know how far you can go, and then you have to know you can push that bit further.

This is why I fight.

- – -

Fellow writers, there’s a metaphor in here. It’s not that subtle. I’m not in the mood for subtlety. Writing is as much a series of battles as any lifelong passion. You’re going to be rejected a thousand times before you get a sniff of success and you have to be prepared for that. Every rejection letter is a bruise. Some of them break the skin.

If you can’t keep going through the pain, quit now. Save yourself the time and effort. For all those others who are willing to weather the pain, the nausea, the sharp tang of blood, and get up again at the end and try again – we’re fighting side by side.

Love to all my friends.