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by David P. Greisman - “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”
Those words, spoken by Tyler Durden in “Fight Club,” underscored the security of our modern world. Mankind is predisposed to war, but the majority of us have become accustomed to preferring peace. We are detached from pain, unfamiliar with the adrenaline that numbs it, blissfully ignorant of circumstances that require motivation out of desperation instead of the paralysis that comes with fear.
We have words for the qualities men exhibit in such a situation. They have a combination of heart, guts and balls. Sam Sheridan discovered a more appropriate term in his excellent book, “A Fighter’s Heart.” The author had trained with Muay Thai fighters in Thailand; mixed martial artists in Iowa; Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialists in Brazil; and a certain Olympic boxing gold medalist turned pro prospect named Andre Ward, and Ward’s trainer, Virgil Hunter, in Oakland.
And then he saw dogfighting in the Far East, where he learned that the most important quality in a pit bull isn’t necessarily the force of his bite, but rather its refusal to quit despite the promise of further violence. The term for this was “gameness.”
“Gameness could be described as courage, but that’s simplistic,” Sheridan wrote. “I’ve heard gameness described as ‘being willing to continue a fight in the face of death,’ and that’s closer; it’s the eagerness to get into the fight, the berserker rage, and then the absolute commitment to fight in the face of pain, and disfigurement, until death. It’s heart, as boxing writers sometimes describe it, with a dark edge, a self-destructive edge; because true gameness doesn’t play it smart, it just keeps coming and coming. No matter what.”
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Those words, spoken by Tyler Durden in “Fight Club,” underscored the security of our modern world. Mankind is predisposed to war, but the majority of us have become accustomed to preferring peace. We are detached from pain, unfamiliar with the adrenaline that numbs it, blissfully ignorant of circumstances that require motivation out of desperation instead of the paralysis that comes with fear.
We have words for the qualities men exhibit in such a situation. They have a combination of heart, guts and balls. Sam Sheridan discovered a more appropriate term in his excellent book, “A Fighter’s Heart.” The author had trained with Muay Thai fighters in Thailand; mixed martial artists in Iowa; Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialists in Brazil; and a certain Olympic boxing gold medalist turned pro prospect named Andre Ward, and Ward’s trainer, Virgil Hunter, in Oakland.
And then he saw dogfighting in the Far East, where he learned that the most important quality in a pit bull isn’t necessarily the force of his bite, but rather its refusal to quit despite the promise of further violence. The term for this was “gameness.”
“Gameness could be described as courage, but that’s simplistic,” Sheridan wrote. “I’ve heard gameness described as ‘being willing to continue a fight in the face of death,’ and that’s closer; it’s the eagerness to get into the fight, the berserker rage, and then the absolute commitment to fight in the face of pain, and disfigurement, until death. It’s heart, as boxing writers sometimes describe it, with a dark edge, a self-destructive edge; because true gameness doesn’t play it smart, it just keeps coming and coming. No matter what.”
[Click Here To Read More]
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