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Authors: Sam Sheridan
Tags: United States, General, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Sports & Recreation, Sports, Martial Artists, Boxing, Martial Arts & Self-Defense, Sheridan; Sam, Martial Artists - United States
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NUMBER SEVEN, FIGHT CLUB
Sam fighting in Springdale, Ohio, May 7, 2004.
It’s not something he can do anything about, being a bleeder, any more than a guy with a glass jaw can do something about not having a set of whiskers.
—F. X. Toole, Rope Burns
It started when I walked into the back room of the Amherst Athletic Club in Amherst, Massachusetts, a little college town in pastoral New England. I was back at home, visiting my mom after a fire season with the Gila Hotshots. December and January in Massachusetts were record-breaking cold, down in the negative 40s at night.
The Amherst Athletic Club had a dark, small room with mats on the floor and rows of gloves and shin pads and various martial arts training gear. The Sheetrock was caved in with human silhouettes where people had been mashed into the wall. I was curious. I asked around, and started training a little bit there, and was shocked to discover how far Mixed Martial Arts had come.
Nearly everyone has heard or seen clips of the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC), started in the United States in 1993, held in the infamous Octagon, a high-walled, chain-link octagonal cage for the fighters to battle in. Ultimate Fighting was marketed as the answer to the questions that had persisted since the karate boom in the sixties: Which style was more effective? My tiger-crane kung fu is far deadlier than your Okinawan karate. Well, now you could prove it. Who wins when a good boxer meets a good kickboxer? When a wrestler fights a kung-fu expert? We can answer those questions by fighting with “no rules,” evoking old gladiator contests, and satisfying the crowd’s bloodlust. Since then, the UFC has moved through various incarnations and venues, has added some basic rules and the use of a referee, and has come under political fire and had management problems. For a while it wasn’t even on cable TV. But the UFC survived due entirely to a grassroots fan base that also trains, and more important, fights.
This is a fan base that fights. It is interested in and drawn to fights, fistfights, action movies, who’s the toughest?–type questions. It is considered “white trash,” and, judging from the crowd shots at the UFC, it is primarily white, male, and tattooed—the disenfranchised, burning to test their manhood, angry at their father or situation or something —in short, my people.
The first UFCs were dominated by a slender Brazilian named Royce Gracie, who won by taking the fight to the ground and using Brazilian jiu-jitsu to control his opponents. Royce and his family’s jiu-jitsu stood the American martial arts world on its head. All these guys who had been doing karate for twenty years, who had their own schools, suddenly realized they had a glaring weakness: the ground. If a fight went to the ground, and they often do, their vaunted kicks and punches were ineffective. People scrambled to learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu. What evolved was a style known as mixed martial arts, or MMA, where practitioners “mix” the various martial arts to make a complete fighter. You mix boxing and kickboxing and muay Thai with freestyle wrestling and jiu-jitsu, maybe a little judo, whatever you want. Just make sure it all works.
Though I knew the UFC was still around—I’d occasionally catch ads for it on television—finding it in my hometown in western Massachusetts was hard to believe. I soon discovered that it was everywhere. There are several hundred all-amateur events a year in the United States. This isn’t like amateur boxing with headgear; this is serious. Your only protection is a mouthpiece, a cup, and some little fingerless gloves so you can punch your opponent in the head and not break your knuckles but still be able to grip and wrestle. This is real fighting, and you can get pounded in there. Although it is sometimes called NHB for “no holds barred,” there are some things you can’t do: head butting, eye gouging, fishhooking (when you
Sam fighting in Springdale, Ohio, May 7, 2004.
It’s not something he can do anything about, being a bleeder, any more than a guy with a glass jaw can do something about not having a set of whiskers.
—F. X. Toole, Rope Burns
It started when I walked into the back room of the Amherst Athletic Club in Amherst, Massachusetts, a little college town in pastoral New England. I was back at home, visiting my mom after a fire season with the Gila Hotshots. December and January in Massachusetts were record-breaking cold, down in the negative 40s at night.
The Amherst Athletic Club had a dark, small room with mats on the floor and rows of gloves and shin pads and various martial arts training gear. The Sheetrock was caved in with human silhouettes where people had been mashed into the wall. I was curious. I asked around, and started training a little bit there, and was shocked to discover how far Mixed Martial Arts had come.
Nearly everyone has heard or seen clips of the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC), started in the United States in 1993, held in the infamous Octagon, a high-walled, chain-link octagonal cage for the fighters to battle in. Ultimate Fighting was marketed as the answer to the questions that had persisted since the karate boom in the sixties: Which style was more effective? My tiger-crane kung fu is far deadlier than your Okinawan karate. Well, now you could prove it. Who wins when a good boxer meets a good kickboxer? When a wrestler fights a kung-fu expert? We can answer those questions by fighting with “no rules,” evoking old gladiator contests, and satisfying the crowd’s bloodlust. Since then, the UFC has moved through various incarnations and venues, has added some basic rules and the use of a referee, and has come under political fire and had management problems. For a while it wasn’t even on cable TV. But the UFC survived due entirely to a grassroots fan base that also trains, and more important, fights.
This is a fan base that fights. It is interested in and drawn to fights, fistfights, action movies, who’s the toughest?–type questions. It is considered “white trash,” and, judging from the crowd shots at the UFC, it is primarily white, male, and tattooed—the disenfranchised, burning to test their manhood, angry at their father or situation or something —in short, my people.
The first UFCs were dominated by a slender Brazilian named Royce Gracie, who won by taking the fight to the ground and using Brazilian jiu-jitsu to control his opponents. Royce and his family’s jiu-jitsu stood the American martial arts world on its head. All these guys who had been doing karate for twenty years, who had their own schools, suddenly realized they had a glaring weakness: the ground. If a fight went to the ground, and they often do, their vaunted kicks and punches were ineffective. People scrambled to learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu. What evolved was a style known as mixed martial arts, or MMA, where practitioners “mix” the various martial arts to make a complete fighter. You mix boxing and kickboxing and muay Thai with freestyle wrestling and jiu-jitsu, maybe a little judo, whatever you want. Just make sure it all works.
Though I knew the UFC was still around—I’d occasionally catch ads for it on television—finding it in my hometown in western Massachusetts was hard to believe. I soon discovered that it was everywhere. There are several hundred all-amateur events a year in the United States. This isn’t like amateur boxing with headgear; this is serious. Your only protection is a mouthpiece, a cup, and some little fingerless gloves so you can punch your opponent in the head and not break your knuckles but still be able to grip and wrestle. This is real fighting, and you can get pounded in there. Although it is sometimes called NHB for “no holds barred,” there are some things you can’t do: head butting, eye gouging, fishhooking (when you
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