A Good Beating

By many accounts mixed martial arts is now the fastest growing sport in the world. Once it was vilified as "barbaric" and "human cockfighting" by no less than U.S. Senator John McCain, a lifetime boxing fan who has fought vigourously to have MMA banned. Today, Toronto and Vancouver consistently rate in the top 10 North American cities for sales of UFC pay-per-view broadcasts. Montreal has hosted three enormous events. Vancouver will host its second tomorrow. But major UFC live events have also been hugely successful in Dubai, England, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Brazil, Germany and Puerto Rico. MMA training gyms are popping up everywhere and (as part of the two-part essay begun yesterday) I have found my way to one of those gyms in Vancouver.

My primary focus, at the moment, is how to extract myself from a kimura submission hold that Roy Duquette has put me in. A kimura is a Jiu-Jitsu hold, more or less the same as a hammerlock, chicken-wing or ude-garami. It also fucking hurts. Roy's in side control and is hyper-rotating my shoulder by pinning my chest and leveraging my upper and lower arms in opposite directions. I tap out.

Roy's a good guy. He is a mixed martial arts trainer, coach and therapist who works with all kinds of fighters at all kinds of levels including stars like Dennis Kang from the UFC and Emily Kwok who in 2007 became the first female Canadian to win a world championship in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Roy has trained in a bouquet of disciplines himself, including Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, grappling, Karate and Russian Sambo, and still spars regularly.

He employs a melange of styles but not haphazardly. Roy is a classic new-school MMA practitioner: it's not meathead bar-brawl stuff he employs; it's more like chess with submissions and knockouts. Roy is convinced that there is something elemental about fighting, especially martial arts: "There's no hiding when you're fighting. That's the realness of it -- it's an expression of you. If you're a coward it will show in there. If you're a psycho it's going to come out."

Now I've convinced Roy to work with me a little, just for fun. We agree to just work on the mat. I'm strong enough, am comfortable scrapping and I like to fight, but I have no idea what I am doing. I have no wrestling or grappling skills, but I'm game and excited to learn some Jiu-Jitsu.

Emma's grip

Roy also brings along a student of his, Emma Lynds, who is a 36-year old mother of two who is the only woman owner of a martial arts gym in Vancouver. She also has a black belt in Hapkido and trains extensively in muay thai, boxing, judo and Jiu-Jitsu. The three of us take turns fighting over the next couple of hours. Roy and Emma are beautiful to watch: spinning, rolling, leaping over each other, countering, counter-countering, and countering again. Roy has a lot more Jiu-Jitsu experience and is far bigger than Emma so he wears her down every time, but there's no charity going on; he has to fight hard.

I love fighting with Emma. She's 135 pounds and I can muscle her around, but she is so smart and skilled that I am constantly getting caught in holds that are very difficult for me to negotiate out of. Because I am 50 pounds heavier, Emma works from her back, keeping me in full-guard most of the time. In our first bout, she just fends me off patiently for a few minutes, then locks in a triangle choke that finishes things. In our next few rounds I figure out a couple of moves so I have some offence. Emma is really helpful, waiting as Roy pauses us and explains what I should be doing, and letting me try stuff out. It feels a bit like I am in a fight, even though I know Emma could submit me pretty easily. Her conditioning is awesome while I wear down, which clouds my thinking. It's really Emma's quick reactions and strategic manoeuvring that impresses me most.

Fighting with Roy is another deal. He just toys with me as I flail around. He repeatedly takes about 30 seconds to get me in some horrific situation that I have to bail out of immediately, and often it's a lot faster than that.

I tap out of the kimura and try again. I shoot at Roy's legs with some conviction, but he splays backwards effortlessly with his elbows on the back of my neck driving my face into the mat. I roll over quickly, but he's on me again. I spin and get to all fours, thinking something good might happen, but before I can think what that might be I'm in an anaconda choke that I have completely failed to defend against. I drop down and pull at his forearms but Roy just bears down on me. This is only going to end poorly, so I tap again. I think Roy's just going through a catalogue of classic MMA submission moves just as a kind of lesson.

It's all good though. It helps a lot that we're doing this without the threat of punches, elbows and/or knees raining down on my face. It's really fun hanging out in someone else's world, especially when they are as skilled and generous as Roy and Emma.

Aside from the occasional burst of shooting pain and the promise of a stiff neck tomorrow I feel like I am in the moment, like I am really present. I have to be, the experience is literally in my face. Later, in the shower struggling to lift my hands above my head, I wonder was that real? I'm no Buddhist, but that idea of presence, of actually being there makes sense to me.

Origins of mixed martial arts

People have always fought, every culture has fighting traditions, and MMA can trace its roots to the Greek pankration (which became an Olympic sport in 648 BCE) or Roman gladiatorial combat, but the modern thread begins with the Gracie family of Brazil and their vale-tudo challenges.

Starting in the 1920s the Gracies developed a Jiu-Jitsu that they became convinced was the world's pre-eminent fighting discipline. They produced a series of videos of their team defeating all comers from all styles. In time they spread their gospel of interdisciplinary fighting to Japan and America, and the first UFC show was held in Denver and shown on pay-per-view television in 1993. The event pitted eight fighters from different disciplines in a cage tournament and the unassuming, 175-pound Royce Gracie (who looks like an accountant) won the whole thing, dispatching beasts like Ken Shamrock and Gerard Gordeau with relative ease. That PPV did huge numbers and after a few regulatory fits and starts has found its footing as a fully legal, prime-time broadcast cultural behemoth.

I frankly don't care much about MMA. I'm intrigued by it, follow it loosely, and will even walk down to the bar for a good fight. More than anything it's the phenomenon that I'm interested in because I think that cage fighting forces us to pull our heads out of the safe, atemporal, aphysical digital realm, and causes us to consider what could be worth not the risk, but the certainty, of experiencing actual, felt pain. In a lot of ways this article could be about growing your own food or riding your bike: it's the same essential argument. If community is predicated on trust, then we can't be afraid of pain or physicality.

Mediation is not the issue, it's about consequence. The further we insulate and isolate ourselves from physical, lived, breathed and tasted consequences, the further we get from the materiality of bodies and stuff to a place where everything becomes spectacle, and the further we get from being able to legitimately talk about ethics and politics and the good life.

And that gets us back to fighting. I'm glad to be standing ringside not because it's real, or an authentic experience, but because it has lived consequence, because it's like a cool drink of water on a hot day, a welcome salve to the digital world. I am happy to have a discussion about whether grown men and women punching each other in the face is an honourable way to spend a Friday night, but let's have that conversation for real.