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Darin Strauss' Half a Life,
a nakedly honest, ultimately hopeful
examination of guilt, responsibility, and
living with the past, is getting rave reviews. To mark
the occasion, get your copy today
at a reduced price.
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A COLUMN CONTEST RUNNER-UP:
- - - - Rory Douglas often finds himself at amateur Mixed Martial Arts events in the Pacific Northwest. He doesn't fight, but he has friends and family who do. These are notes on the fights and the people in them. - - - - C O L U M N 1 Fight One.BY RORY DOUGLAS- - - - Tonight I'm going to Edmonds Community College in Edmonds, Washington to watch my oldest brother, Chad, 25, a highly paid scientist with the Boeing Company, owner of two homes and two cars and a generally likeable person, fight another man inside a cage. The fight will end when one of them is unconscious, or is in a position where he has to cry uncle, or the three rounds end and the judges decide who delivered the worst beating. Whatever sort of rubric the judges use, they always pick the same winner as my 11-year-old brother, Jake, who doesn't miss a fight. He's a fifth grader at a local Christian academy. He loves this stuff. No one's making Chad do this. He's been doing it for a year or so, training two hours a day after work and fighting every other month, and he's definitely not getting paid for it. I don't know why he does it. Neither does he, as far as I know. I've rolled through a lot of theories, theories that involve things like Fight Club or phrases like "postmodern equivalent of gladiatorial games" or just an old-fashioned Jesus-shaped hole in Chad's heart, but none of them holds much water when I'm actually watching two guys do everything short of bite each other. Chad's is one of fifteen amateur fights this evening, all part of an event called Axfighting. No axes are involved. No one who organizes the fights has any good explanation for the name, so I'm going to go ahead and say that "Ax" is being used as an intensifier, like "cool" or "awesome." I'm hoping it'll catch on: "That perm is so ax." The fights will take place in a hexagonal ring enclosed by rubber-coated chain-link fencing. These are cage fights. You might have seen Ultimate Fighting Championships on TV. It's the same idea as amateur mixed martial arts, with a few different rules. However, I'd avoid comparing the two—live mixed martial arts is just a totally different experience from televised ultimate fighting, especially when you have a family member involved. - - - - At the Fight Proper The line is out the door. I'm standing with Jake in a line for people who, like us, wisely bought their $25 tickets ahead of time, a line that is somehow not moving. In front of me an adult male is wearing a shirt that reads I LIVE ON THE CORNER OF BITE ME BLVD AND NO FREAKIN' WAY. I'm trying to imagine a universe that makes this T-shirt a plausible wardrobe option—maybe he actually lives at the intersection of streets with these names—but I'm rescued by Jake, who's using his 11-year-old powers to cut in line, and I'm not about to lose him in this crowd. The attendees are mostly white. Caucasian, yes, but more white, pasty, Washingtonians-in-January white. In the crowd of roughly two thousand I count seven people of color. In sight range there are eight heads shaved to the skull. I'd estimate the crowd is 80% male. Apparently black is the wardrobe color in the suburbs right now. No matter how many spotlights and posters and amps you put in a community college gym it still looks like a community college gym: basketball hoops folded to the ceiling, plaques celebrating dubious athletic accomplishments, wooden bleachers designed with a total disregard for the human sitting position. And it's crowded. We had to get here an hour early just to get seats for our cluster of friends and family. It is hot. - - - - Franklin the Turtle Before every fight, when each fighter walks out to the ring from a back door with his posse—usually his coach and training partners and assorted riffraff-types—they play a song over the PA system. I don't know what the songs are supposed to express, whether they're supposed to be an expression of the fighter's worldview and life philosophy or just something to get him jazzed up before the fight. The songs are usually angry rap or angry rock or an angry combination of the two. Jake states that his song would be "Our Song" by Taylor Swift. It would be really neat if I could record each song and then compare that fighter's performance to his—or her!—song, maybe with a line graph. I have a theory that the angrier the song the worse the fighter, or at least the fighter's performance, and I'm going to hypothesize that the last thing a fighter needs before fighting is a jolt of anger, since it seems like good fighting depends more on clear-headed judgment than on wanting to fuck the world. I'm unable to note the songs because I'm distracted by someone I'll call Franklin. He looks like Franklin the Turtle. He wears thick glasses, and is standing just below our seats on the gym floor. He's chubby. He appears to be unaccompanied. As soon as each intro song begins playing, he immediately begins dancing, head bobbing, and generally just rocking out, even if said song doesn't lend itself to rocking out. While rocking out he looks around him, using the head bobs as a sprinkler-style way of moving his gaze. His expression is the expression of someone looking for ladies. Except for those in my immediate family, Franklin is my favorite person in the gymnasium. - - - - I'm not going to give a play-by-play of any fights besides my brother's. As engaging as they are to watch in person, it'd be boring to describe every fight in detail, and I missed a lot of them while going on Gatorade runs with Jake. Instead, I give you... 1. The Go Fuck Your Mother, I'm Too Angry to Throw a Sophisticated Punch 2. The I'd Fuck My Mother, But I'd Have to Go to the Cemetery and Dig Her Up Punch 3. The Your Elbow Doesn't Bend that Way 4. The I Will Rip Your Fucking Head Off 5. The Spinning Roundhouse Kick to the Face 6. The Raining Hammers of Thor 7. The Let's Hold Each Other's Heads While We Knee Each Other in the Body The Climbing the Cage, Straddling the Padded Top Bar, and Riding it As Though It is A Horse or Perhaps a Woman - - - - My Brother's Fight Chad comes out with his posse, his coaches or buddies or whoever, people I don't know, definitely not Boeing friends. His song is by Flogging Molly. Franklin is rocking. Chad looks bloated. He cut about 15 pounds of water weight to make the 155-pound weight class. He's regained most of that in the past 24 hours. The fighters tap gloves at the beginning of the fight while the ref gives redundant instructions. Chad's strategy is to avoid giving the other guy the puncher's chance, the chance to knock Chad out with a lucky punch. Chad takes him down by grabbing both his legs and charging. Someone in our little cluster has distributed fruit snacks but has neglected to give me any. The other guy is on his back with Chad on top. You can do plenty of terrible things to the other person while on your back. Most of them involve depriving him of oxygen or snapping his humerus. The other guy has his legs wrapped around Chad. Neither can do much from here. They're grappling for position, slight shifts of hips and a game of who-has-whose wrists. If someone gains decisive control the crowd will stand up. They can tell when something's coming. I can't. No one is currently being punched or bent. The gym hasn't cooled off at all. The sweat on my arms might be other people's sweat that has evaporated and condensed on me. We stand to watch. Chad somehow tucks his opponent's hands under his (Chad's) legs, leaving nothing between my brother's fists and his opponent's face. Chad is sitting on his chest like they're going to have a tickle war. Thor's hammers begin to rain. My brother is in a cage in front of thousands of people punching another man in the skull again and again and again. The ref blows a whistle. The fight is over. Chad wins by technical knockout in the first round. He will soon have a title fight. It will involve a novelty-size belt. Even better, I get to leave the gymnasium and its terrible wooden bleachers. - - - -
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