On Ryu And Ken

Something I've been thinking about again recently - partly because Street Fighter IV's just been announced - is how much I love Ryu. More specifically, how much I love him in comparison to Ken. I know I've talked before about how Ken's a showoff while Ryu's fundamentally the best videogame character in history, but I thought of another thing. So.

Look at Ken's catchphrase:

I know the designers probably didn't put much thought into it, but that's typically bolshy and American, as well as completely stupid - she's already attacked you Ken, that's why she's bruised and crying. Now look at Ryu's:

How helpful is that? He wants you to understand that you need to counter his Dragon Punch. He doesn't just want to assert his superiority over you - he wants you to get better, so it'll force him to get better. In an earlier version of the game, he actually tells you that you need more training to beat him. And he's right! This is the sort of thing that makes Ryu so brilliant.

The depressing thing is, Ryu's just about exactly as good as Ken - or if you talk to Street Fighter experts, who know about delays and buffering and things I barely comprehend, actually slightly worse - even though Ryu practices all the time while Ken regularly trots off to drive posh sports cars or impregnate his wife Jane. Later editions of the game - along with comic and anime film tie-ins - compensate for this sort of stuff by insisting that Ryu's got the mental fortitude that Ken lacks, and that whenever he loses - to Ken in Alpha 1, for instance - it's simply because his mind isn't on the fight for whatever reason. They also suggest that he's really got the most potential out of all the fighters because Akuma's scared of him, and that the only reason he isn't the hardest man in the world, ever, is that he refuses to embrace his evil side. Which is lovely, but sort of misses the point, which is: Ken's probably just supernaturally talented at hitting people. Ryu isn't, and although he tries his best, he can't ever get better than Ken.

...

I don't really know what the life-lesson is there, but I'm sure I took it on board as a child.

I LOVE THIS MAN

And I really need to get back to learning Japanese.

War, Baby

I'm reading it at the moment - it's an account of the famous Benn/McLellan fight that ended with one man blinded and in a coma. Tragic, readable stuff, but more than anything else I like this line:

'When they win, when they experience the joy of physical dominance, they are more alive than anyone they have ever known - when they lose, when they are knocked out or marginalised by boxing's powerbrokers, they experience desolation that, thankfully, few of us will ever experience.'

Yeah.

Fight Week Is Over

...but, of course, you don't know what Fight Week was. Allow me to explain.

Fight Week was my first week of training full-time with a professional fight team, going to all of their practices and seeing if I could handle the pace. How did I do? Let's take stock:

Injuries

1. Minor Head Wound: probably from sliding along a wrestling mat on my forehead after a takedown, then aggravating the resulting burn by getting punched on it. Serious? Not really. Annoying to explain to everyone? Yes.
   
2. Dodgy Neck: from being neck-cranked - twice! - by someone who probably outweighed me by four stone and didn't know any other moves. I really should be able to counter that by now, though.
   
3. Minor Scuff On Left Knuckle: from doing the same left body-hook on a punchbag about a thousand times, probably aggravated by not wrapping my hands properly.
4. Vague Discomfort In Right Forearm: I imagine this was from getting punched on it.
   

Miscellany

• I am not fit enough. I get hopelessly knackered in two minute rounds of sparring - to the point where I can barely throw a combination - and although this is probably partly to do with me adrenaline-dumping because I'm so scared of everyone I spar with, it's also probably a lot to do with the fact that I haven't been running in nearly three months.
• Nearly everyone is better than me at jujitsu. Seriously. Even the people I thought were bruisers have a level of jujitsu that's genuinely frightening.
  
• I need to get better at wrestling.
  
• Having a Proper Fight is still a long way off.
  

Sigh.

Getting compliments

I am, as you've no doubt noticed, both funny and excellent at writing. I like it when my friends/peers laugh at something I've written, and like it even more when they drop me pithy little emails to say that they laughed at something when I wasn't around.

But somehow, that all pales into insignificance beside the two compliments I got today:

1. 'That shot's coming along nicely.' from Olympic-standard wrestler and top bloke Saeed, after I tackled someone to the floor with what's known as 'good penetration.' I'd make a joke about that, but I'm sure you're clever enough to come up with your own. And more importantly...

2. 'You've got the heart for this game. I can't train that.' from boxing coach and top bloke Andy, after I spent three rounds of sparring getting punched in the face so hard that my jaw's definitely going to hurt all week. My little heart nearly burst with pride.

Another Thing I've Been Thinking About...

...is that Street Fighter 2 is a bit like boxing, and every good 3D beat-em-up is a bit like Brazilian Jujitsu.

To explain: in Street Fighter 2, there are six buttons for hitting people. You can press them while you're standing still, ducking, jumping straight up in the air or jumping forwards and backwards. Then you've got two or three special moves, but they're fairly easy to learn. After one glance at the move list, you can literally do any of your character's moves any time you like.

By contrast, Tekken and Virtua Fighter take ages to learn. Every character has about fifty very specific combos, along with twenty special moves that usually aren't at all memorable. It'll take you a good few hours just to learn them all, and then you'll probably forget half of them the first time you need them.

If you're not acquainted with boxing or (more likely) jujitsu, here's how they work. In boxing, you've got about six punches - jab, straight, left and right hooks, left and right uppercuts. You can do them while you're ducking and moving and stuff, but that's about it. Throw in some rolls to the side - which I'm not very good at - and some blocks, and you know how to box. What you don't know, obviously, is the infinite number of ways you can combine all of those things to make combos and flow from one move to another and distract the other person from what you're really trying to do and set up the thing you actually want to hit them with.

In BJJ, by contrast, there are fucking loads of moves. Even if you discount the stupid ones that nobody ever does in a really serious fight, you need to learn to do about twenty things really well before you'll stand even a vague chance in a BJJ match against, say, a blue belt. Then chances are he'll still pull something out of the bag and armbar you anyway.

I don't know why I bring this up. I just think it's interesting.

Look here's a picture of Guile:

I BLOODY LOVE YOU, JANE.

The UFC Game

Well, it looks okay, except that Chuck wouldn't ever go for a triangle choke like this on Rampage Jackson - he mainly works to get up off his back from half-guard. They've clearly copied it off 'Page's fight with Ricardo Arona. 7/10
I'm joking, obviously. The UFC game is going to be the best thing of all time. They've even nailed how Chuck fakes with a left before he throws an overhand right, and how he's a little bit flabby. As long as they put Fedor in it and have a better system than the old games for letting you counter armbars, I'm giving it a million out of ten.

Concept footage, obv.

Andy Bogard Knows The Score

At the moment, I am practicing every day. Well, most days. Well, Mondays and Wednesdays definitely, Thursdays usually, Fridays when there's nothing more fun going on at the pub and Sunday when I'm not viciously hungover. And I am getting loads better, but still probably not loads better enough to win any competitions. But I still find Andy's is a useful philosophy to have, whether you're trying to learn Japanese or lindy hop. Practice every day - even if it's just for twenty minutes - and it all mounts up.

Yes, I know that's obvious. I just like Andy Bogard.

On Getting Punched In The Face

It's been a while since I've done any serious boxing sparring. I kid myself that this is because I love jujitsu and would rather use my time to get better at that, but really it's just that I don't really like getting punched in the face.

Or do I?

The thing is, if you want to learn to defend yourself - really, properly defend yourself - you are going to have to get punched in the face. Probably more than once, and ideally by somebody who knows how to punch people in the face properly. Because the first time it happens you aren't going to know what the hell's going on, and that's not too bad if the other person sees you're rocked and backs off, but absolutely terrible if they want to knock you to the floor and then keep doing hurtful things to you. The amount of people - sadly, often girls - who tell me that they're confident about being in a fight because they 'did kickboxing' for two years - then explain that they never really sparred properly - honestly terrifies me.

Anyway, it's been a while for me, but tonight at training I did four things that I'd honestly recommend to anyone who wants to get used to being hit in the face. Maybe you can try them at work!

1. Spar with a tennis ball tucked under your chin. If you let the tennis ball drop, you're being too skittish.

2. Let someone punch you - very gently - in the forehead for a minute or so.

3. Spin around loads, then shadowbox. Not only is this fun, it gets you used to hitting people while dizzy.

4. Spar with someone eight inches taller than you, so that he clocks you in the face constantly.

Jesus, my face hurts.

The Best Film In The World

...is, of course, Fist Of Legend.

Fist Of Legend actually continues the story of Fearless, because Jet Li plays a student of the (real-life) character he plays in Fearless out to avenge the (spoiler!) poisoning of his master. Confusing, I know.

Anyway, it's also a remake of Bruce Lee's Fist Of Fury, but it's about ten million times better because:

a) It isn't nearly as jingoistic: Jet's got a Japanese girlfriend, and both master Funakoshi and the man who ultimately saves everyone else are Japanese...in contrast to FOF, where anyone Japanese is a total shit.

b) It's got a bit in it where Jet Li punches a man in the face twice with his left hand, then fakes like he's going throw a right, except that he just waves instead and clocks him with another left. It's more exciting than it sounds.

c) It's got a bit where Jet's former best friend trips him over and instead of falling on his head, Jet drops into what Capoeiristas will recognise as a flawless au batido, which I spent about two months trying to 'do'.

d) It's got another bit where Jet does a spinning tornado kick over a belt that's actually part of a chainwhip form that I really can 'do' - in real life and everything - which makes me very proud.

e) It's got the line, 'To say that Master Funakoshi is the best is to speak of his cultivation, not his expertise in killing', in it.

Watch the subtitled version if you can, by the way. The dub removes all the political undertones and sort of breaks it.

God I love kung fu.

The Second Best Film In The World

I'm a bit more cheerful today.

The main reason is that I re-watched Jet Li's Fearless. I've got no idea why it didn't get better reviews - the fight scenes are incredible, and even the bits where the pace slows down are a heartbreaking counterpoint to the main action. The first time I watched it, I thought the best non-hitting scene was the bit where Jet Li and his Japanese rival Takada chat about tea, except that it emerges that they're really talking about their philosophies of fighting: Takada likes rules and grades when it comes to tea, but Jet prefers to just drink the tea and decide whether he likes it or not, which is exactly the same as the way Jet refuses to regard any single fighting style as better than the rest. Beautiful.

Anyway, I was wrong: the best scene is before that, when Jet's yet to develop this peaceful philosophy and he's all about drinking rice wine and beating people up. His friend doesn't understand why he loves fighting so much, so Jet takes him out to the fight platform where he's been kicking people all day, and says:

"You've only watched from below. Can you feel the difference? When you're down there [in the crowd], life and death up here mean nothing to you. It's all entertainment. When you're up here, though, you have to win. Losing is not an option."

And his friend, who's a much nicer person than Jet Li at this point, says:

"But you can choose not to be up here."

...

So, yeah, I'm thinking of giving up fighting again.

Another Reason I'm Probably Sort Of Crazy

...is that before Street Fighter, there was Vendetta. Vendetta was a lot like Streets Of Rage and miles better than Double Dragon, but what it had in common with the latter, like a lot of games of the time...


...was that you were fighting to rescue your girlfriend. And restore peace to the city, but whatever. The thing is, I played these games for years, and whatever studies say about computer games not affecting you, I'm pretty sure there was a chunk of my brain, when I was a kid, that thought that if you were just good enough at fighting, then everything would be okay. That you could protect all the people you liked, and beat up all the bad guys, and the worst that could happen to anyone was that they'd be temporarily kidnapped but still there cheering when you fought the final boss at the end.

And, of course, that just isn't true. No matter how good you are at fighting, the bad guys carry knives, and are often bigger than you, and are often psychotic, and sometimes come in groups, and even if none of the above applies you still can't beat them up because you'd get sued and anyway it wouldn't really solve anything.

But that isn't even the worst bit. The worst bit is, that it doesn't really matter how good you are at fighting, because when the worst happens you inevitably aren't even there.

Sometimes, I feel like the grown-up world's let me down.


Fucking hell.

Everybody Wants To Be Rampage

So Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson's fighting Chuck Liddell tonight. I'll be watching it on youtube grainyvision tomorrow morning and expecting Rampage to not press the action at and get knocked out...but that's not the point. The point is, probably because they've been watching too many Jackson highlight videos, everyone I'm training with at the moment thinks that the correct defence to a triangle is to pick me up and slam me on my head. Fortunately, because I'm not Ricardo Arona, the last person who tried it got halfway up in the air, before I hooked the back of his leg and transitioned into probably the most beautiful armbar I've ever done. Snap!

The blog's going to be pretty self-congratulatory for the next couple of days, I'm afraid. I'm back training regularly, and it makes me rambunctious.

I Think I've Chipped A Bit Off My Elbow

Jesus Christ, why am I so stubborn about tapping out?

Genki Sudo

Genki Sudo is the coolest man in the entire world. Including me.

I'm not joking.

Obviously, the problem with the internet is that you're now in a position to compare yourself with every other human being in the entire world, which can make you feel a bit insignificant at times. No matter how good you are at a thing, somebody else is almost certainly better at it, and the proof'll be on Youtube. Fortunately, for people who've yet to make peace with their own failings - like me - there's one easy way to get round this: you just do loads of different things, and console yourself with the fact that you're better at that combination of things that everybody. Someone's better at hitting people than me? He probably hasn't read that many books. Someone's really good at writing? He probably can't do an arm-triangle choke to save his life. Somebody's good at punching people and writing? Well, at least I make a kickass Hollandaise sauce.

This is, of course, several sorts of mental, but it keeps me happy.

Anyway, I've only ever met one person who was better at everything I like doing than me, and that was eight years ago: he was good at boxing, spoke Spanish, knew loads about politics, kicked my ass at chess and was a very, very nice bloke.

And then there's Genki Sudo.

Genki Sudo retired on New Year's eve. He probably wasn't good enough to be a serious contender for the K-1 lightweight championship, he's best mates with Pride lightweight champ Takanori Gomi and the UFC once stiffed him out of the worst decision I've ever seen, so I don't blame him, really. But here's an abridged list of stuff that he did before retirement.

-Beat heavyweight boxer Butterbean by bouncing off the ropes and doing a flying dropkick on him, then heelhooking him until he tapped like a giant baby.

-Did an entrance where he dressed up as a baseball player with 'Peace' on his shirt and danced with a load of cheerleaders who spelled out 'Love' with their pom-poms.

-Walked around Japan's famous 88-temple Shikoku island pilgrimage - something most people do in a luxury air-conditioned bus - and wrote a book called 'Happiness Theory' about it.

-Fought world-champion kickboxers Albert Kraus and Masato to questionable decision losses in kickboxing, even though he's better at Brazilian jujitsu.

-...and several other things.

I wish I was Genki Sudo.

Note To Self:

So some girls came back to the flat the other night. It was unplanned, which is always a worry when you live with flatmates like mine, but the mess was...tolerable. No bio-organic matter on the coffee table, only a couple of pairs of my flatmate's pants hanging on the hallway radiator, etc, etc. Fine.

Except. One of the girls started idly leafing through the magazines and books lying round the living room. Vice Magazine? Fine. Venue? Yeah, I've done some writing for that one. Chuck Palahniuk's new novel? I'm a big fan of his work.

Eddie Bravo's Mastering The Rubber Guard: Jujitsu For MMA?

She picked it up, looked at one page, went oddly quiet and put it down without another word. They both left about twenty minutes later.

Note to self: hide the fight books better.

A book that is good, and a book that is shit.

So: picaresque tales are big at the moment. And I've read two in about a week, and it's unlikely that the Guardian will pay me to review them, so I might as well do it here.

Okay. One's called Bruce Lee And Me, and the other's called American Shaolin. They're thematically quite similar - author feels like he's missing some fundamental component of masculinity, goes to kungfu lessons, goes to Shaolin temple, has adventures - but their approaches couldn't be more different. One is brilliant, and one is awful.

Awful first: Bruce Lee And Me is all about its author. At the start, he tells us how he decided to train in martial arts - his publisher told him to. From then on, he moans about training, gets schooled by sixty-year-olds, completely wimps out of his plan to try and get a black belt, projects his own values and morals onto absolutely everything he sees and routinely segues off into little diatribes about marijuana, babies or films he's seen recently. Possibly this is because he's 48, and set in his ways. I don't really give a fuck.

By contrast, American Shaolin is sparkly and brilliant. It describes the author's experiences in Shaolin in 1993, when he author was 21 - which makes him much more willing to examine his own experiences, learn from other people's philosophies and generally not act like a prick. He speaks fluent Mandarin, so his chats with the monks have infinitely more depth than the superficial, borderline-insulting chats that the Bruce Lee and Me bloke dredges up. He's got a genuine interest in China, shown by the historical and economic lessons deftly sewn into the text. And he's a very funny writer.

Also, he starts the book with my favourite ever Neal Stephenson quote, which tells you all you need to know about male psychology - 'Until a man is twenty-five, he thinks that, under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.' - and he beats a load of sanda champions up.

Excellent.

Baki The Fucking Grappler

Baki The Grappler is the best comic in the world. Probably. I can´t actually read most of it, because it´s in Japanese and my nihongo is only about good enough to translate certain key words - ´Danger!´ ´Victory!´ ´Guillotine Choke!´ - and I´ve never bothered to try figuring the rest out. Also, it´s criminally under-represented in the Manga-loving West - even though it runs to two seasons of 40-odd issues each, plus a softcore erotica special that I can´t quite bring myself to buy, it never gets more than a cursory mention in the sorts of histories of the artform that wet themselves over stuff like Barefoot Gen.

Not that it matters. Here´s the plot, condensed and as far as I can work it out: there´s this kid called Baki. He fucking loves fighting, and fights all the time. His dad's the best fighter in the entire world and a master of every single fighting style, and his half-brother - sired during the Vietnam war, by the looks of things - is a steroid-addled maniac. The first twenty or so volumes of the comic sort of skirt around this, and the artwork's still evolving, so those with limited cash/rucksack-space might want to skip them, because the best bit happens when they go to The Tournament.

This is what happens at the tournament: the 32 best fighters in the world - plus reserves - spend a combined total of about a thousand pages beating the shit out of each other.

Baki wins, obv.

But it's amazing. If you were brought up on Western comics, you're probably used to Batman throwing unrealistic roundhouses at thugs who contort like shop dummies - this does not happen in Baki The Grappler. Every panel's drawn with a sort of frightening devotion to muscular human anatomy - if I was a tedious Late Show panelist I'd probably call it homoerotic - and the imaginatively, horrible ways you could distort it if you were really good at hitting/strangling people. Favourite moments? How about the bit where Jack Hammer realises that the aikido master's using his strength against him, so he approaches really slowly and then bites through his forearm? Or the Russian wrestler bloke suplexing an anaconda? Or Baki's dad kicking a man in the groin so hard that it inverts his entire ribcage? It's absolutely astonishing, and all comics that aren't Baki The Grappler should be ashamed of themselves.

That is all.

I Have A New Favourite Way To Strangle People

Two exciting things happened yesterday.

1. I bought a new gi. It´s blue, and my mum always tells me I should wear more blue because it brings out my eyes, so she should be pleased.

2. I learned a new way to strangle people!

My old favourite way to strangle people was the guillotine choke - it´s quick and efficient, and you can sort of do it while you´re standing up, but pulling off it mostly relies on the person you´re fighting being a fucking idiot, and I´m fighting less and less of them these days.

Another good way to strangle people is the rear naked choke - or to give it its butch Brazilian name, the Mata Leao (lion killer) - because the other person can´t hit you while you´re doing it, but setting it up´s sort of complicated and if you´re that much better than the other person you could just punch them in the head or something.

My new favourite way to strangle people is the Anaconda, and it´s totally wicked. Known as the Gator Roll (a name I sort of prefer) in America, it gets that title from the fact that after you´ve grabbed your opponent´s head (and arm) as they shoot in on you, you torque your body (and theirs) in the manner of an alligator trying to drown Mick Dundee. Then, once you´ve thrashed about a bit, you sort of shuffle in towards them until their head feels like it´s going to come off. Brilliant!

Some people might say that it´s weird toi have a favourite way of strangling people, but those people are just jealous. Make no mistake, yo - if you come in at me with your head down and your arm all floppy, you are getting chizzoked the fuck out. I´ll make you tap like Ginger Rodgers. Word!

Note: in order not to cause offence, I should probably point out that I don´t really advocate strangling people. In fact, none of the above techniques are even strangles - they cut off your carotid arteries, not your windpipe, so they´re technically chokes. But I like the word ´´strangle´ and the Brazilians call them éstrangular, so that´s the way it stays. What am I, an English teacher?

About That Title

It´s from Street Fighter 2, obviously.

I say `obviously´, but unless you grew up in a certain set of circumstances at a very particular time, it´s unlikely that Street Fighter 2´s had the sort of impact on your life that it´s had on mine. And I´m going to choose my words carefully here, because the next bit could make me sound sort of mental.

It´s all about the endings. Not Blanka´s, obviously, where a woman who lost her son in the Amazon rainforest twenty years previously deludes herself that a green, electricity-channeling beastman must be her long-lost offspring, because he´s wearing an ankle bracelet that looks sort of familiar. Or Zangief´s, where president Gorbachev turns up and they have a little dance. Or even Chun Li´s - which revisionist historians insist is canon despite the fact Ryu could beat Chun Li just by uppercutting all the time - where she goes back to being a young, single girl, like all girls really want, right? No.

Ken´s ending is your classic Hollywood archetype: he wins the fight, his girlfriend turns up (yeah, at Shadoloo´s secret Thailand base, what?), they get married. Lovely.

Guile´s ending is your classic Jean Claude Van Damme archetype: he wins the fight, he´s on the verge of killing Bison, his estranged wife and daughter turn up and persuade him that murder won´t bring Charlie back, they go home and buy a dog. Magic.

(Note to Guile: killing Bison doesn´t make you ´just as bad as him´. Developing a synthetic drug called Doll which you plan to use to raise an army of brainwashed assassins and murder your way to ruling the world would make you just as bad as him: killing him is just sensible. Sonic Boom his nose into his brain: if Jane doesn´t want your daughter to see that sort of thing, she shouldn´t have brought her to an international fighting tournament.)

And then there´s Ryu.

As the victory ceremony begins, Sagat and Bison take to the podium, which might be surprising to anyone who thought a psycho-power-flaunting megalomaniac would be a bad
sport. But...














WHERE IS RYU, AS THE CROWDS CHANT HIS NAME?














He´s fucked off! Ceremony means nothing to him! He doesn´t even care about winning that much! The battle is all!

Now, you could argue that Ryu is just a stock wandering warrior archetype, that he´s been done a million times and that there´s nothing special about him. You could say that he´s wasting his life. You could also - if you´re being picky - argue that this sort of dedication to fighting wouldn´t be sensible in the real world, and (if you were charged with making a comic about Ryu, say) portray him as a luddite who has trouble grasping concepts like laundry and email.

(Another aside: apparently Miyamoto Musashi - the best swordsman in Japanese history, and as close to the epitome of the wandering warrior as you´ll find in real life - was reputed not to take baths. Ever. He also employed quite a lot of ´tactics´ that you´d probably call ´cheating´in the modern western idiom. But that´s another story.)

You might be right. But there´s something about the simplicty of one man, with a duffel bag full of passports and folding cash, one outfit and no shoes (time saved at airport metal detectors: probably loads) wandering around looking for fights that is undisputably fucking brilliant. It´s been argued that the best videogame characters are blank slates - the less you know about them, the more you project your own values onto and therefore identify with and like them. If Lara Croft, say, made a big deal of how much she liked acid jazz and kittens, and you hate acid jazz and kittens, you´d probably like her less. But because nobody mentions it, you assume she shares your opinions re: music and baby cats, and carry on buying her games.

Ryu´s the same. I don´t need to know that he likes eating and dislikes spiders (he once swallowed one when he was asleep! Thanks, stupid Capcom biography). I barely even need the subtle difference in philosophies hinted at by the arcade version´s AI (at the end of rounds, Ken starts going crazy with hurricane kicks and dragon punches because he´s a massive ponce, while Ryu´s content to wear you down with constant fireballs). I just need that shot of a man walking into the sunset, alredy seeking the next challenge.

Ryu is the best videogame character ever.

A Thing I Don´t Like

Gi rash.

There´s currently a bit on the centre of my back - about the size of an old 50p - that I´ve basically worn away by rolling around and rubbing my gi over. If you can remember the scene from Flash Gordon where Ornella Mutti´s refusing to talk and Klytus goes to fetch the bore worms, it´s like that every time I put on suntan lotion. Only significantly less sexy.

I Thought Of Some Other Ones

1. It´s a handy social shortcut
I went for my first BJJ lesson in Rio´s Gracie Barra academy yesterday. The place was full of genuine badasses and people with ears that looked like they´d been sculpted out of candlewax by a clumsy toddler. As I walked in, four of them were smashing the pads like they´d just been personally insulted. But because I had a gi on and was ready to fight, every single one of them shook my hand and gave me the thumbs up.

2. It makes Not Fighting feel amazing.
Objectively speaking, the ´best´ time I´ve ever had was lying on a beach in Miami, chatting to pretty girls, drinking mojitos and listening to 80s music. But let´s face it - however much money you fling away in the pursuit of ´having fun´, there´s only a finite amount of fun to be had. Unless, of course, you´ve just spent two breathless mintes being suffocated under a gigantic man´s sweat-sodden gi as he tries to break your arm. After that, even breathing the (relatively) fresh air of the gym feels like being a newborn dolphin taking its first lungful of oxygen, and even the chlorine-tinted tapwater from the drinking fountain tastes like life. After my last training session, I was ten cents short of buying a frosty iced tea, then found an extra coin in my pocket. Subjectively speaking, that was probably the happiest moment of my life. I imagine it´s like coming out of a car crash with a newfound respect for life, only a bit less traumatic.

3. It puts my head in a terrifyingly aggressive place.
No, not necessarily a good thing. But anyway.

A quick word on forearm chokes: in jujitsu, they´re sort of frowned upon - usually used by big men against little ones (because they don´t really work otherwise), they´re one of the least technical, most strength-oriented moves you can do. They´re (relatively) easy to defend, but if someone´s really trying to put on one you, then at best you´re going to get a sore jaw, or maybe a bruised trachea. I don´t use them, because I´m a gentleman.

Anyway. During my second training session today, I got paired off with another beginner - a gigantic white belt who probably outweighed me by 15 kilos. He started the sparring session by insisting that I prop my leg up in an odd position...which turned out to be a way for him to practice the sweep he´d been working on. He ended up sitting on me and - inevitably - went for the forearm choke. And even though I was exhausted from rolling all morning, my first thought wasn´t ´Shit.´or ´Tap!´ It was ´Forearm choke, eh? You´re going to pay for that, you little bitch.´

He turend out to be quite a nice man, as it happens. But I swept him and tired him out anyway.

Why I Love Fighting

Lots of reasons, really.

I´ve done enough different types of fighting, in enough places, with enough people, that I love all sorts of different things about the noble art of beating people up.

I like the ridiculous quasi-fighting of Capoeira, with its rules that emphasise beauty of movement and not getting your spotless white pants dusty by falling over.

I like doing back somersaults in wushu, even though they´re basically a bit stupid. I like doing layouts (where your body´s totally straight, non-gymnasts) even more, although the only person I´ve ever seen hit someone with one was a CG version of Spider-Man (when he fights Mary Jane´s muggers, comic fans).

I like the feeling of snapping someone´s head back with a perfect jab when I´m boxing, especially they´re windmilling in and trying to hurt me. See also: hitting them with a really good leg shot that bruises up their thigh right where it´ll slow them down.

I like Brazilian Jujitsu because it´s the complete opposite of boxing, not about reactions and speed so much as it´s about outthinking and controlling your opponent. Because someone can be nailing you with the same move again and again, but if you learn the right counter to it, suddenly it won´t work any more, and that´s brilliant.

I like the camaraderie and respect that fighting creates between the people who do it, because you can´t really spar with anyone for any great length of time if you honestly think they´re a dick.

Lots of reasons, then. But one main one: because fighting makes you feel like you can do anything.

Not just because you´re good at beating people up, obviously. I´m semi-good at beating people up, but only if they aren´t much bigger than me or armed with anything, and since I only weigh 75kg and the sorts of people who might like to hurt you tend to carry around things to do it with, that discounts quite a lot of people I might get in a fight with. There´s a self-confidence that goes with knowing you could beat up a layman or fairweather fighter: definitely. But there´s more to it than that.

Here´s the thing: fight with enough people, in enough places, for long enough, and almost nothing else scares you. Once you´ve taken a few shots from someone who isn´t going to back up or let you get a breath, talking to new people at a party is absolutely nothing. Once you´ve walked into a classful of people who want to strangle you or sit on your chest until it feels like your ribs are caving in, no yoga seminar or pottery workshop is even remotely intimidating. And once you´ve gone from being the person who gets sat on, hit, strangled and dead-legged to the person dishing it out - or at least making the competition take you seriously - any other challenge should be simple.

I haven´t played many other sports at any kind of serious level. I can just about appreciate the difficulties of catching a good cros-court volley on the rise and smashing it into the opposite corner for a match-winner, or bending a free kick over a wall and past a goalie. I don´t know if they make you feel like that.

But I suspect not.