The first hundred pages of Sam Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart made me want to pack it in and take up needlepoint. After graduating from high school, Sheridan joined the Merchant Marines, went to Harvard to study art, sailed around the world as a crew member on a yacht, studied Muay Thai in Thailand, won a fight in Thailand, got his EMT certification, fought fires in Washington and Arizona, worked in Antarctica, studied MMA with Pat Miletich and received a good clobbering in an amateur MMA match. In short, he’s done everything awesome.
Sheridan describes the adventures he has during his quest to understand fighting and the men who choose to fight with a balanced mix of articulate insight and thoroughly readable “guy-speak.† He’s genuine and likable. In fact, he’s so likeable that when he writes at length about other fighters the chapters start to drag—especially the informative but 20 pages too long chapter on boxing. Sam is the main character of A Fighter’s Heart. And when Sam starts training for a fight, his dedication is so inspiring it made this writer want to put down the book and hit the gym. His efforts were heroic, even when they didn’t translate into wins.
Because he was a man immersed in male-dominated circles, A Fighter’s Heart is often as much about men as it is about fighting. When he followed Brazilian Rodrigo Nogueira to a PRIDE match with Fedor Emelienko, the chapter wound up being about the intensity of the experience, about camaraderie and in Sheridan’s own words, about “love†between men who fight. In contrast, his exploration of the world of boxing with Andre Ward and Virgil Hunter revealed a look into the tight, symbiotic “two against the world†relationship shared between coach and the athlete.
Sheridan’s brief examination of the idea of “gameness,†a concept that comes from the world of dog fighting, and its application to men was itself worth the price of the book.  He describes gameness as “the eagerness to get into the fight, the berserker rage, and then the absolute commitment to the fight in the face of pain, and disfigurement, until death.”
The final chapter of A Fighter’s Heart wasn’t as conciliatory as I feared it might be. He did his homework and tried to see fighting from all sides—even from the perspective of Michael Kimmel, feminism’s foremost expert in the pathology of masculinity. He searched his soul and even had himself professionally evaluated for signs of psychopathology and comes up empty handed. In the end, he remains true to the spirit of the book. Even though Sheridan struggles with some of the moral issues surrounding fighting, he admits that he still loves fighting and admires the men who fight, especially the men who have made fighting their craft. His moral conflict about fighting is a healthy one that you can find in the literature about fighting men throughout the ages.
Good men have misgivings about fighting. They’re conflicted about it. And because they’re conflicted about it, they create rules and codes of honor to govern it. But, like Sheridan, they still do it. Because they want to. Fighting still attracts them, makes them feel alive, drives them.
Maybe that is a takeaway here. Men aren’t all stupid thugs who fight because they’ve never thought about it, because they don’t know any better. They fight because they want to. Because feminized, civilized society can’t offer them something that fighting can—what Yukio Mishima called “poetry with a splash of blood.†Because without conflict, life has no compelling narrative, no passion, no peaks and valleys, no grand motifs.  Without conflict, we’re just like the monks who taught Sheridan dynamic vipassana at Wat Thaton. Walking around in a circle, hamsters on a wheel, meditating on the movements of our own bodies while the thriving, bustling, struggling, fighting din of life calls to us from just over the hills. Without conflict, without fighting, life is an episode of Sienfeld—a show about nothing.
Jack Donovan is the author of Androphilia and the co-author of Blood-Brotherhood and Other Rites of Male Alliance. He lives in Portland, Oregon and works in the fitness industry.
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Those involved in Boxing sometimes call it Sweet Science. If you know anything about it then the fist thing you will discover is that boxers are extreme athletes. The demands of boxing are such that only fitness at the highest level will do. You will also understand that boxing is extremely skilful – a combination of strength, balletic agility and courage that goes beyond the normal.
Those who know nothing about it can have any the ignorant opinions they want.
I get shit all the time about how I like to “roll around on the floor with sweaty men”. My only response is “Get on the mat.”
People give me shit about training all the time. “You just like rolling around with sweaty men.”
My only response is, “Get on the mat.”
You will also understand that boxing is extremely skillful – a combination of strength, balletic agility and courage that goes beyond the normal.
Yeah, that was the basic gist of the chapter on boxing.
Fighting is equal to the ability to survive. There are inherent differences in that between girls and boys.
Boys at a very young age will wrestle with each other. Girls rarely do ever.
Our society has turned that into “Bullying” and tried to repress it and other aspects of masculinity they find distasteful.
These things are fun to watch, but they are shows. Real fighting is when somebody dies. In the old days if there was a beef guns or swords came out. Boxing actually became popular with the Victorian era, people could see fighting but with a strict set of rules and no death or maiming.
And this smacks of Ernest Hemingway pseudo-masculinity. Nobody who can get into Harvard should join the Merchant Marine. It’s not romantic it’s just dumb. Nor should such a person be a crewmember on a yacht. Yacht crewmembers are servants. But being meat in a gladiatorial entertainment is way beyond dumb. All these things are OK choices for people who lack better opportunities but ridiculous for anyone holding a ticket to the upper class.
Malcolm Gladwell has a nice article on the brain damage that can be caused by contact sports:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell
I love football, so this makes _me_ conflicted.
“Because without conflict, life has no compelling narrative, no passion, no peaks and valleys, no grand motifs.” The link between conflict and narrative is why there are many male authors and few women authors.
I have to decry the rise in popularity of MMA and the decline of boxing. The rise of the former seems to me an emblem of our society’s embrace of crude thuggishness. I remember seeing Brock Lesnar pounding Randy Couture’s head into the ground with his fist and and saying, WTF is this?
“All these things are OK choices for people who lack better opportunities but ridiculous for anyone holding a ticket to the upper class.”
Way to completely miss the point. Joining the Merchant Marine, going to Thailand, fighting, beating and being beaten, those are the things of men and his Harvard education likely stood in the way of deep-seated longings being realized. Men are born thumotic—it really is that simple. Men are both with fighting character, a kind of masculine spiritedness that doesn’t lend itself very easily to the things his “ticket to the upper class” would have gotten him (ie, a nice, safe, air-conditioned office, moving money around on Wall Street, toiling endlessly for his trophy-wife/baby machine who would divorce him at the first sign his wealth could dissipate).
His education still couldn’t give him the one thing he craved most: to feel like a man, to be a man among men. The choice he made doesn’t surprise me. And I say that as an Ivy League graduate myself.
@ Jim: That is the most ignorant thing I’ve read all morning.
Boxing declined because it became more about titles than the fight and skill, and the fighters became soft and lost their character—at least in the heavyweight division. There are so many federations with many so titles and now you have guys avoiding fights just so they can hold on to their particular belts. It’s just pathetic.
With MMA, the purses have definitely gotten bigger, but that hasn’t softened the guys because you still can’t shirk a fight with someone of equal or greater skill because it will damage your reputation—you may never get back in the ring. You simply have to fight. And when guys want to and have to man up, it makes it worth tuning in.
“I have to decry the rise in popularity of MMA and the decline of boxing. The rise of the former seems to me an emblem of our society’s embrace of crude thuggishness. I remember seeing Brock Lesnar pounding Randy Couture’s head into the ground with his fist and and saying, WTF is this?”
That is an oversimplification of MMA. Brock Lesner is an example of strength and speed overwhelming technique and skill. Sometimes big and strong just wins. But I remember the early days (been watching since UFC 2) when Royce Gracy would slowly out endure a much larger opponent, smothering him with grappling techniques, until the exhausted opponent made a mistake and a submission move was applied. That was chess. You get that still in MMA, both in grappling and striking, and the vague inbetween state of the two, but you also get the occasional pounding resulting from a skilled fighter capitalizing on a mistake or getting lucky or overwhelming a lesser opponent. There is always some chance in fighting. Sometimes a far weaker opponent can get in a lucky game changing punch. That is what makes it exciting. I could argue that with the addition of rounds and more and more rules, that MMA tends to favor a more aggressive and brutal style now, but people didn’t like the slow chess like matches of Ju-Jitsu grappling, even though I loved them. Also, its fairly proven that MMA is far, far safer than boxing, were repeated, near endless blows to the head cause brain damage, or football, were catastrophic injuries occur from the force of 250 lb men running head first into each other. I love MMA. There is nothing wrong with it. Many of its fighters are quite intellectual and hold degrees. The respect fighters most often show to each other after the matches is enough reason to respect it as a sport.
Vipassana is fighting. A vipassana retreat is one of the hardest things in the world. Try it and see.
Jim:
“The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors, will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by foolsâ€
Thucydides
I love the articles here. You guys are building an important library of modern male thought. Maybe the best collection I’ve seen.
Having said that, let me play devils advocate, if only half-heartedly.
Like most men, I was attracted to fighting in my youth, attracted to watching fights later, and still hold a sense of awe when I watch old clips of Ali, Hagler, Leonard, et al.
But I also take pause to question how this speaks to the legacy of the disposable male. Look at Ali now. Look at the numbers of punch drunk, neurologically devastated men, those in early and obscure graves, that no one even thinks about any more because they didn’t find enough glory when they were young and “invincible.”
To me, in some ways, the fighter is the man who stays on deck while the ship sinks, the soldier who takes the bullet for those safe at home. He is the model for the perfect protector/sacrificer, which is by no coincidence at all the same model of man that gets played like a mark in the carnival side-show of modern life. And we sing his praises only while the blood still runs and only to give younger men something at best dubious to aspire.
I don’t think many consider this they ogle the bikini clad bimbo that walks the round card between each three minutes finely crafted hell.
Sure, men are driven to it. They indeed want to. But part of me says. “So what?”
Men are driven to do lots of things, like mindlessly protecting women. I dare say some of those drives are hardly in our best interest. Not any more, if ever they were.
There has been some really good discussion here on breaking free from the old paradigm. I have enjoyed a good deal of it. But suddenly I am saddened by my own hypocrisy. I will no doubt continue to marvel at the great warriors of the ring. But part of me sees them as pawns; patsy’s for causes that ultimately sacrifice them for the sake of nothing that matters.
@Paul Elam -
But part of me sees them as pawns; patsy’s for causes that ultimately sacrifice them for the sake of nothing that matters.
What matters? That’s really the question. What is a life well lived? I life lived in comfort or in strife…
Doing your first competitive fight is analagous to the old “blooding” in hunting, or other rites of passage. Guys don’t get that now, which is probably why so many of them are pussies. There’s a telling quote in Fight Club: “After a night at Fight Club, the rest of the world has the volume turned down”. That absolutely describes me after a fight.
MMA is a funny one. The rules have been tinkered with to deliberately turn it into sloppy kickboxing for the casual North American yahoo to cheer. Under old-school rules (no time limits, no stand ups, no weight divisions, no gloves etc) it was completely different. As Murillo Bustamante once said: Imagine a guy drops you off in the middle of the desert and flies off in a helicopter. If he says “I’ll be back tomorrow” you hunker down. If he just flies off, you have to start walking. A completely different mindset.
MMA now is just too bulls running headfirst into each other. That’s why guys like Brock do so well.
BTW, another good fighting book is ex-heavyweight champ Gene Tunney’s “A Man Must Fight”
Men today have no noble cause to ally themselves to, or join with other like-minded men. No nation building, no grand cause.
So, they become Ronin and fight for themselves.
And we, in turn, heap praise upon the solitary athlete.
@ Firepower
Bingo.
Yeah—but let’s remember that these kinds of men weren’t always “disposable”. They were once rewarded for their tremendous burdens and sacrifices by being highly esteemed in the professions and homes. Ever since time began this was the trade-off.
These kinds of men are in a sense “disposable” today because many things have conspired to create a society that, at least outwardly, does not seem to need these sorts of manly instincts. What use is a warrior’s strength and courage when fighting is done by missile launch? Of what need is the steady hand of the farmer now that the soil is tilled by machines? Now that women can provide for themselves, wherefore the struggle for status and respect that inevitably takes place among men? And so on. So, over time, those things have become devalued as do those who embody those values. And in recent decades in the Western world, the trend has defintiely been in the that direction…
…But every action spawns a counteraction. The intervening decades has also led to the thriving of a sort of ‘feminized’ man—the one women were told thought they would like much better…but that really has not proven the case. Women are now much more unhappy than ever and I believe that this is, in part, because they are unhappy with what men have become.
Which is one reason (among many) why the sort of man in this post will never be disposable, no matter what it seems. There will always be a place for him, and demand for him will grow because there simply aren’t many like him in our society anymore. Most of my woman-friends readily admit they would prefer having a boyfriend/husband who could fix a flat tire or kick the shit out of somebody if it had to happen. One reason why this kind of man isn’t “disposable”, is because women don’t want him to go away.
But the more important reason why this kind of man isn’t going away is because the vagaries of human nature aren’t going away. Just when we thought we were safe, masculine violence brought down the towers in NYC—a terrible tragedy. But then masculine strength and nobility rescued the wounded, cleared the rubble, reaffirmed the determination of our nation to press forward.
Does that sounds “disposable” to you?
@ Jim: What man doesn’t have dreams of adventure, of battle, and of unpredictable wildness? How many of the “upper class” have experienced the things he has? Their lives are slacks and loafers and emails. There is wildness in the heart of all men; no matter how deep their apparent ‘civility’ runs. Harvard cant give that to you.
Regarding MMA— I think the way it is presented has a lot to do with the perception it’s just a bunch of cretins pounding each other. Blame that on the UFC. They need to appeal to the largest audience possible who will fork over money to see guys fight. Hence the 8th-grade WWE marketing style, hence the rules that now totally favor stand-up brawls. That’s what the UFC market share wants to see, not jiu jitsu chess matches and 30-minute rounds. I think the sport itself is great—two men fighting, not constrained to any particular discipline, is one of the purest forms of competition. The drawback lies in the marketing and blatant restructuring of refereeing and judging to favor the bloody poundings you see replayed on Spike TV every night.
””””””’Firepower November 4, 2009 at 9:28 am
Men today have no noble cause to ally themselves to, or join with other like-minded men. No nation building, no grand cause.
So, they become Ronin and fight for themselves.
And we, in turn, heap praise upon the solitary athlete.
””””””””””
That tore at the guts right there. Where the fuck is my world war ii oh well. Got to make shit up to achieve I wreckin.
**Interesting, but generalizing. The Gracie family was upper crust and introduced the world to MMA.
Born in Belém, Brazil on October 1st, 1913, to parents Gastão and Cesalina, Hélio was the youngest of five children. It was in the same city of Belém that Hélio’s father had met and befriended Mitsuyo Maeda (also known as Count Koma) some years prior. At the time, Gastão Gracie was an important political figure and had used his influence to help Maeda establish a Japanese colony. In return for his help, Maeda offered to teach Gracie’s eldest son Carlos the ways of jiu-jitsu.
Helio Gracie-Passing Of A Legend
The rest as they say, is history.
Too much information, I know…but this is my passion. I’ve been with BJJ since 2002 and the mats are like a temple to me.
The discussion of the “rough and tumble” in the book’s “albion’s seed” has made it clear to me that a culture that “really” values fighting can be bad news:
http://books.google.com/books?id=jMNyioKp7YQC&pg=PA737&lpg=PA737&dq=rough+and+tumble+albion%27s+seed&source=bl&ots=0-4cgaEVgk&sig=U748SfCn1IzN6RTuw5pcoJ3bMdQ&hl=en&ei=V9PxSvnxG4i6lAea_O29Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
@ dragnet
“Does that sounds “disposable†to you?”
Oh, most definitely. To the core. Despite what women want or don’t want, which seems to change faster than gears in a Lotus racer, the ultimate job for men lies in being prepared to die for women. We are all replaceable in that way. The pool of men will always be there to fix tires or fight wars. Women’s self sufficiency changes none of that.
I am not buying that there was ever such a trade of off esteem for blood in the common man. In the realm of kings and statesmen, perhaps. But the failing in your point, IMO, is the same one that feminists made by asserting that men had all the power simply because a lot of what we called power was brokered by men.
Or, in the words of Jack Kammer, “Looking at men in government and deciding they have all the power is like looking at women in grocery stores and deciding they have all the food.”
Most men who ever died in wars were poor and powerless. They were not near so much revered and honored as they were used and exploited. Sure, they may have had some women shaking pom poms at them as they left for battle, and once again as they returned, if so lucky as to do so. Even many Vietnam vets couldn’t pay for a drink in a bar after coming home. But they were killing themselves from PTSD by the untold thousands as those that “honored” them looked the other way.
I understand that the reverence felt for combat veterans (mostly from other men) is heartfelt in many, but in the real world, the world of our actions and deeds, they are nothing more than a John Wayne film clip that are out of site and out of mind as a matter of routine. We treat, and have always treated our veterans like dogs.
And this is no less true in “unfeminized” countries. During the Iran-Iraq war, one of the things that Iranian commanders did to test Iraqi defenses was to send human waves of young, unarmed boys into direct fire. They gauged where the defenses were weakest by the spots where the fewest bodies fell.
In that war, as in most others, it is nothing more than young men dying for the financial or property interests of older men. And in that war, as others, we develop mechanism to glorify and “honor” those who bleed, mainly because those who profit from the battle aren’t about to do the bleeding for themselves.
“What use is a warrior’s strength and courage when fighting is done by missile launch?
Personally, I don’t hold any real romantic feelings for the strength of those hacking each other to death in an open field. Nor again do I think there was any real integrity in how most of those situations developed.
What I do think, though, is that what we see here on this website is the natural and “times appropriate” evolution of the warrior into modern relevance. There isn’t any legitimate need for blowing shit up around the world, but there is a great need for intellectual warriors to take arms against the forces that work against men. I include the old paradigm of beloved warrior in that as much as I do the new paradigm of the emasculated castrado.
In that light, I would glorify Kammer and Fathers for Justice rather than Patton or Alvin York.
The warrior poet. I apply what I have learned from studying martial arts and various military philosophers as best I can to the war of ideas now brewing. Of course I can also apply those to protecting my home and body in the event of a some extraordinary circumstance, but they are far less likely to be needed in that context. I still like good ole’ mano a mano fighting. Its primal. What can you do? And you can’t always rely on law and order to protect you. Sometimes you’re left to your own devices. At this point, I would never die for my country. Thats why young men’s hormones make them risk takers. A civilization needs a pool of men stupid enough to fight in a war, and biology has seen that such a pool of men exists.
We are nothing but killers in nice suits. Never forget human nature, fight or flight, the need to kill those that would do your family harm. If there is nothing to fight for anymore, we must fight against the emptiness and create something worth fighting for.
The corroded temple we now reside in must burn because we forget who built it. Society needs to burn so we can build again. This is the curse of humanity.
Males going Ronin, that hit the nail. All countries have failed in providing reasons to fight for them, at least for me. But, although I can only speak for myself but any male could say the same, we refuse to serve either the Female Supremacy or a Marxist Warlord.
What’s left? Ourselves. The right to exist and be in a civilization that doesn’t try to fuck us in the ass. Both physical and political fights must be done in this, and, Paul Elam, although you can think that Sam Sheridan’s fights were meaningless, so what? He fighted for himself, and there’s nothing more true to manhood than that.
He inspire young males to not just go in drunken matches, to not just go to die in a war or a gang fight, but fighting just because is the thing that males do. It’s pure, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Most of my woman-friends readily admit they would prefer having a boyfriend/husband who could fix a flat tire or kick the shit out of somebody if it had to happen. One reason why this kind of man isn’t “disposableâ€, is because women don’t want him to go away.
Dragnet you’ve nailed it.
I did martial arts (taekwon do and kung fu) in my teens and twenties, I lived with a man (alpha bad boy) who taught me a little about boxing, and I still like to hit the bag occasionally.
I enjoy the wrestling, although I had to watch Beyond the Mat first to gain some sort of appreciation.
Growing up an army brat, I’ve always had an appreciation for the military, so I’ve always preferred men who have that extra bit of indefinable something.
But that’s just me, and it’s remarkable how few women seem to be able to relate to that. So many say they want a real man, but those who like to fight are thugs, those who want to support and protect their country and are willing to die to do so are obviously nuts and you all know how it goes.
Then the women wonder why the men they do find can’t make any sort of commitment to a lunch date next week let alone a lifetime.
Deep down, we do want a real man, but these days we’re also not equipped to recognise one after so many years of swimming in a sea of misandry.
Changing tyres? Sure I can change my own. Fix a leaky tap or toilet? I can do that too. I can pretty much do what I need but you know what?
I don’t care about a bloke buying my flowers or dinner. Flowers die and I can cook my own food.
A man who volunteers to do little things like tap washers gets my eternal gratitude and respect every time.
And if he wants to kick the crap out of someone in defense of me, then so much the better, and yes it does make me go weak at the knees.
There aren’t too many like that around these days, so I don’t hold my breath.
Now how to impart that to a daughter……
Those decrying MMA often have no clue & just go by superficial appearances or are caught up too much in boxing only mentality. Also they are mistaken if they think that MMA is some new fad, its nothing but the rebirth of Pankration which along with Boxing & Wrestling were part of the Ancient Olympics in Greece.
I watch all combat sports including Thaiboxing, K1, MMA & Boxing. MMA is probably more safe than the others, the reason for that is since ground strikes are allowed the fights get stopped far sooner whereas in Boxing the guy gets a 10 count everytime he goes down & if he gets up he continues to take more blows to the head resulting in greater chances of brain damage or death. Also you can end fights with submission moves in MMA not just by pummeling the other guy. As far as I know there have been at most 3 deaths in MMA & 2 of them in unsanctioned fights.
I agree with others comments UFC & North American MMA in general favoring stand up brawling though to appease the casual fans. In Japan the fans appreciate the groundgame & Pride used to have rules much more closer to true unarmed combat unlike the unified rules which don’t allow soccer kicks, head stomps, pile drivers (Bob Sapp pulled this off in that epic fight against Minotauro) & knees to the head of a downed opponent.
I prefer MMA because its the closest to pure unarmed combat but I like Boxing as well (Roberto Duran, JCC, Arguello & Pacman are my favorite boxers).
“MMA now is just too bulls running headfirst into each other. That’s why guys like Brock do so well.”
Apparently, you’ve never seen Lyoto Machida, Anderson Silva, Fedor, or BJ Penn fight. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made just a gross assumption like that.
As a MMA hobbyist myself, I can attest takes more of a global set of skills and attributes more than just “too bulls running headfirst” as a strategy, especially with Muay Thai and groundfighting/grappling.
this book is must read material for men in the current landscape. i’ve reread portions of hit countless times. he very concisely articulates the need for man to prove himself through adversity, regardless of the chosen avenue
@Jack
Here’s the paradox of the Warrior’s heart:
I remember the remarkable reasoning of German biologist (of the ’40s) regarding doves and wolves.
He observes, when rival doves are confined into a small space, they peck at each other do death. That’s because they have evolved to be timid, and normally fly away to avoid conflict. So, he infers, they have not developed a sense of “mercy.”
Wolves, on the other hand, are fierce warriors. And yet, when a wolf exposes its neck to its rival during a fight, the fighting stops. He concludes, only those who know how to fight, i.e. who face the bloody consequences of a ruthless fight, develop a sense of mercy.
Kind hearts belong to warrior types, not sissies. Sissies are, paradoxically, the most sociopathic and narcissistic.
Beautiful example, sir. I like it.
And based on my experience and observations, mostly true.
The visual of sissies pecking each other to death is priceless.
“Because without conflict, life has no compelling narrative, no passion, no peaks and valleys, no grand motifs.”…………
And yet women are criticised for liking drama.
Jim:
“And this smacks of Ernest Hemingway pseudo-masculinity. Nobody who can get into Harvard should join the Merchant Marine. It’s not romantic it’s just dumb. Nor should such a person be a crewmember on a yacht. Yacht crewmembers are servants. But being meat in a gladiatorial entertainment is way beyond dumb. All these things are OK choices for people who lack better opportunities but ridiculous for anyone holding a ticket to the upper class.”
Yeah, if he knew what was good for him, he would have settled into his role within the investor class, while occupying his time with phone calls, paper shuffling, number crunching, gossip and political maneuvering. That would have made for a much more satisfying life.
As a person who has never derived much satisfaction from any job that I have ever had, I can honestly say that taking up Muay Thai is one of the best decisions I have ever made. Now I couldn’t give two shits about how emasculating and soul-crushing my office jobs are. When you do Thai boxing, bullshit office politics and the meaningless drudgery of the work itself cease to matter. None of your bosses or coworkers can do Muay Thai or anything comparable, so fuck ‘em!
When people say that, they’re talking about the drama of relationships, not the drama of the human overcoming nature and/or his own limitations.
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