I started practicing martial arts exactly ten years ago, in May of 2003. Back then, I was a frustrated young man with longings I couldn't quite understand. Maybe it's cliché, but after reading the iconic FIGHT CLUB, by Chuck Palahniuk, I felt an irrepressible urge to confront my own powerlessness. Back then, an unknown company named ZUFFA LLC had just bought the Ultimate Fighting Championship with a precise goal in mind. They wanted to revolutionize sports entertainment and create the superbowl of mixed martial arts and hell, they did.
Ten years later, the UFC is on cable television several times a month, it has come to my city six times, has won over millions of fans across the world and changed several thousand of lives, a bit like it changed mine. That should make me happy, but it doesn't. The more mainstream recognition mixed martial arts are getting, the more miserable I seem to be. I have become a bitter, cynical jerk at the gym and it haunted me for the longest time. Today, I'm ready to talk about it. Ten years after confronting my powerlessness, I'm ready to confront my cynicism.
When I first stepped on the mats, all these years ago, it felt like discovering a lost civilization, lost in the meanders of the Amazonian jungle. The therapeutic aspect of it (who am I kidding? My journey in mixed martial arts had a 99% therapeutic purpose), came from the fact I was doing something nobody else dared doing. Squaring off against a real mixed martial artist takes courage, sure, but its only a step in the process. Everybody can get beat up. Learning self-control facing adversity, producing tangible offensive against a more seasoned fighter is the difficult part. It's also the most rewarding part, becoming one of them.
So where did I lose myself, exactly? Several wrong turns were taken. Accepting teaching duties didn't help. I love to teach. Nothing equals the feeling of seeing a once feeble, uncoordinated person morph develop a sense of self, work ethics and then finding success. Makes you feel like you've done something that matters. But being the teacher puts you in front of variables you wish you didn't know existed. For example, that your lost civilization of the Amazon is now the no.1 travel destination according to Lonely Planet and that hordes of people are stampeding into your previously unscathed haven, seeking the same enlightenment that once changed you.
But what is there left of my own personal Eldorado, if people desperate to live something special are crawling all over it? The booming popularity of mixed martial arts changed the meaning of its experience. The UFC has its share of blame about that shift in perception. They have built a culture of exclusivity around their product, that it more enviable than the product itself. Private parties for connected people, public workouts for unconnected people, glamorous nightlife for athletes, abundance of images of a bloody, battered, triumphant warrior, in periphery of almost every fight, long, in-depth lifestyle output both during the shows and in mainstream culture. The UFC wants you to feel like you're a part of something.
Now, I don't want to begrudge a company for having a remarkable marketing team. Doing all that makes sense for them, but it corrupts the original spirit of martial arts, for it's not about the inwards journey anymore. They promote several athletes who had that journey. Most of their successful fighters had it. But the likes of Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Cain Velasquez and Jose Aldo are an end in themselves. For them, it has been about confronting their fears, transcending their limitations and mastering their body better than anybody else. The glamorous lifestyle has been a byproduct, a pleasant distraction from the life discipline that brought them so much success. Ironically, UFC employee Joe Rogan explained what I'm trying to say best.
When I first stepped on the mats, all these years ago, it felt like discovering a lost civilization, lost in the meanders of the Amazonian jungle. The therapeutic aspect of it (who am I kidding? My journey in mixed martial arts had a 99% therapeutic purpose), came from the fact I was doing something nobody else dared doing. Squaring off against a real mixed martial artist takes courage, sure, but its only a step in the process. Everybody can get beat up. Learning self-control facing adversity, producing tangible offensive against a more seasoned fighter is the difficult part. It's also the most rewarding part, becoming one of them.
So where did I lose myself, exactly? Several wrong turns were taken. Accepting teaching duties didn't help. I love to teach. Nothing equals the feeling of seeing a once feeble, uncoordinated person morph develop a sense of self, work ethics and then finding success. Makes you feel like you've done something that matters. But being the teacher puts you in front of variables you wish you didn't know existed. For example, that your lost civilization of the Amazon is now the no.1 travel destination according to Lonely Planet and that hordes of people are stampeding into your previously unscathed haven, seeking the same enlightenment that once changed you.
But what is there left of my own personal Eldorado, if people desperate to live something special are crawling all over it? The booming popularity of mixed martial arts changed the meaning of its experience. The UFC has its share of blame about that shift in perception. They have built a culture of exclusivity around their product, that it more enviable than the product itself. Private parties for connected people, public workouts for unconnected people, glamorous nightlife for athletes, abundance of images of a bloody, battered, triumphant warrior, in periphery of almost every fight, long, in-depth lifestyle output both during the shows and in mainstream culture. The UFC wants you to feel like you're a part of something.
Now, I don't want to begrudge a company for having a remarkable marketing team. Doing all that makes sense for them, but it corrupts the original spirit of martial arts, for it's not about the inwards journey anymore. They promote several athletes who had that journey. Most of their successful fighters had it. But the likes of Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Cain Velasquez and Jose Aldo are an end in themselves. For them, it has been about confronting their fears, transcending their limitations and mastering their body better than anybody else. The glamorous lifestyle has been a byproduct, a pleasant distraction from the life discipline that brought them so much success. Ironically, UFC employee Joe Rogan explained what I'm trying to say best.
I became cynical about martial arts when the inwards journey of self-empowerment became entangled in an exclusive culture. It became about showing you're empowered, rather than being so, because you need to belong. While this corruption originated in a perception shift that the UFC engineered, it outgrew them. I find myself in disagreement that one should undertake the martial arts journey to become like somebody else. It's something personal, intimate even, that aims to broaden the boundaries of the self. By losing sight of that, martial arts loses its sacred character.
Don't get me wrong, there are still several martial artists out there. I see one walk in the gym every now and then. We never talk much, but when we train together, we communicate in a wordless language and understand each other so well. Real martial artists won't feel the need to share their own story in the comments, they won't tell me how much they relate to me, they know better. Your progression as a martial artist is your own. The growth you'll experience as an athlete and a person should be sufficient to you. If it's not, you're probably not doing this for the right reasons.
Neither do I, to be honest. I realize today that I too, seek something out of martial arts. It's not something I do for its own sake, at least, not anymore. I do martial arts to become a better, stronger individual. Its power has transported me far away from the sad young person I once was. But the current state of the game has been stunting my growth and therefore, I have grown quite cynical about it. I am not seeking to become a UFC fighter, I am not seeking to belong to its culture, I merely want to keep improving my life and this essay is an integral part of the process. I aim to become someone better.