Yesterday I and two of my fellow fighters were invited to cross-train with a local FMA group. The senior teacher is, I think, the head of the regional branch of an international FMA conference. This very knowledgeable Martial Arts Master invited us into the coolest martial arts man-cave on earth. Maybe T. Boone Pickens has a bigger one with animal heads mounted on the wall. But the only thing that this basement was missing in terms of knuckle-head appeal was a hot tub occupied by Cynthia Rothrock.

I told my guys going in that this was basically an audition to be permitted to spar with the students of these martial arts teachers. Our goal was to show control, and demonstrate ‘sparring’ not fighting. There is a huge disconnect in terminology between people like myself with a boxing background and martial artists. In the martial arts world sparring is competition, as this term is used to keep the athletic commission off their back. In the boxing and submission combat world sparring is ‘work’.

Our demo seemed to calm their fears that we might be some kind of animalistic cave men like the Dog Brother’s. We then had a long discussion concerning safety equipment, rules etc. During the course of this discussion I was referred to as a teacher and as a martial artist. I corrected any notion that I was a teacher. I then objected to being called a martial artist. This brought a shocked look and dropped a few jaws. The Master asked me, “Then what are you?”

I answered, “A fighter, and a coach.”

To me a coach is just an advisor who assists fighters with self-improvement. I am not a complete coach, but see myself in the specialist ‘trainer’ role. My friends in boxing do not trust me to coach their fighters, as I have a reputation for being overly concerned about defense and the health of the fighter. In boxing I am strictly a jab and foot work specialist who helps tweak a fighter’s outer range skills.

This sentiment, that I am not a teacher, instructor, Sifu, etc., is easy to communicate to martial arts teachers, who are then moved to tolerate me and take me under the wing. What gets under their skin is my rejection of martial artistry. I have never believed in art in any form. Most people, if shipwrecked with the Mona Lisa, would cling to it as they eked out a living, in hopes of being credited with or rewarded for preserving the world’s greatest masterpiece once rescued. I would use it for kindling to light my campfire.

The Master that hosted us made sure we were nourished with cool water and organic fruit and spent a lot of time promoting wellness. I was glad to hear him talking to my young friends like this. I think it troubled him that I showed no concern for my physical well-being and in fact admitted to numerous repetitions of the very injuries that he was warning my fellows about; the consequences of continuing along the minimal-gear path that we are following in our exploration of combat.

I have never been able to adequately explain myself to such concerned humanitarians in the past, so am attempting to do so in written form, which is the only form of communication where I have been successful. [Just ask my numerous Xs.] The Master’s main concern was that we pursue martial arts as not just fighting, but also spiritual development. Again, I am not a martial artist. I just train with martial artists because some of them are willing to spar and fight, and I am curious about combat: not the theory, but the reality; not the details of perfection, but the nuances of the messy result. I seek chaos not order. I am a barbarian and care little for civilization and social structures beyond that compelled by my natural human curiosity.

Where do I stand morally, ethically, in regards to combat?

I see myself as lowly slave exploited by a vastly evil society. I am a private person, and therefore do not seek to convince others of my beliefs, and do not strive to overthrow my evil masters. I do, however, express a limited sense of intense freedom that few ever savor. I fight. I also help others fight.

What are my ethics there?

Yesterday our host expressed the belief that when two teams fight that the object is only to win, and that the other team’s fighter will seek to win under any circumstances.

I am at odds with this ethic. Let me walk you through my combat ethics progression:

Any fighter who seeks me out for assistance is a person I am bound to protect from himself as much as possible. It is his job to protect himself against others. I focus on avoiding training injuries and helping him avoid the pitfalls that I experienced. When I spar with someone I am looking out for both of us. If he lets his ego take over and tries to hurt me, it is now a fight, a competition, and I act according to ‘2’ below.

Any opponent I face in competition is not an enemy. I fight him to test myself and earn a temporary freedom from our stifling artificial existence. Winning is a nice bonus, and I have won over 500 fights with stick, steel and fist. I have enjoyed the 200+ fights I have lost just as much. Winning is not important.

When I fought John Bosch in Chesapeake, Virginia his team captain was our referee, and was scoring the fights. John had broken a stick on my hand and I had knocked his head piece loose. I could tell by the way the referee nodded to John that he was going to award me the fight on head shots. I stopped him and said, ‘Don’t raise my hand. He broke it right out of the gate.’ He said, ‘You fought the whole fight with a broken hand, you deserve it.’ I retorted, ‘Without this glove it would have been a compound. I would have had to go left-handed.’ He responded, ‘Then you raise his hand, I won’t.’ I raised his hand. Eating that pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream after the fight was tougher than most of the fights I have had.

I respect my opponent far more than the crowd and the officials. In fact I only fight in structured martial arts events as a way to recruit my opponents to fight in freestyle events.

When I was boxing once I broke my opponent’s lower rib above the liver. This was a gypsy rules fight in front of a half dozen people using hard leather bag gloves. One of the spectators began making fun of my opponent. I carried him to the ten minute time limit, and made certain not to hit him with another body shot. He was the only guy in the room I cared about.

Combat sports: boxing, MMA, FMA stick fights, are all nothing but old men imposing their will on young men through rules. The most insulting thing to me as a stick-fighter is when a referee makes me hold sticks together at the forte until he separates the sticks with his stick. His stick becomes more important than our stick by way of this artifice, even though he is not a fighter, and we are. I believe in tapping sticks. Any stick-fight in which the referee intrudes by way of this stick-breaking ritual cannot, in my heart, be a fight worthy of winning. When the referee breaks these sticks, in my mind, it becomes a fight between my opponent and I and the entire intrusive organization of non-combatants who are overseeing us. My goals, in such a fight, is to survive it, for my opponent to survive it, and for the crowd to care more about the quality of our combat than the qualification of it that is offered by the soft old men when it is over.

When Rico Arus and I fought in Apollo Ladra’s Maryland Open in 2006, after he knocked me out and brought me my second place trophy, we walked out of there as one [me being the inferior half], having defeated our enemy in the eyes of the 1,800 people in attendance. Rico had earlier chewed out Apollo and a referee about the bogus scoring in the padded wand event, and went on to make his point in the ring with me. We had defeated that corrupt event officiated by non-fighters via the KO. We did not leave the outcome in the hands of the soft, civilized officials, but finished it the right way; barbarically, as men, not as the puppets of non-fighters. Rico stood over me at the end; but even on my back, I stood over everyone else in the Du Burns Arena—the only real man out of a thousand other than him. That is how a barbarian looks at your world of art, as a battlefield to be crushed under his feet while he tests himself against the only person that matters—his counterpart.

I have enemies: the people who have attempted to rob, intimidate and attack me, and do likewise to my wife and sons, as well as customers and coworkers I have been paid to protect, on the streets of Baltimore City, in alleys, on parking lots, in the workplace, and on my own front porch. I have survived fist fights, rock fights, bat fights, knife fights, gun fights and attacks with 4,000 pound automobiles.

It is my opponents, the men who I have fought in artificially officiated and freestyle contests, who have pulled me through these harrowing encounters. You see, they taught me how to survive. If I can survive a fight with the Number 2 middleweight in the world I can survive an attack by some teenager with a bat. They have also taught me how to let them survive. For, if I maim or kill my attacker, I will go to prison. As much as I resent my slave-masters at City Hall, in the State House, and in the White House, they at least permit me to decide when I go outside and what I eat.

Knowing how to let my opponent finish the fight in one piece helps me let my attacker do the same, and keeps me out of prison. Every FMA instructor I know teaches you to take a knifer’s knife from him and stab him with it. No thanks, I choose not to exist in prison, but live a little bit out here in the ghetto. And fighting in any competition where I have a reasonable chance of being seriously injured helps me maintain that ability; that limited sense of freedom, even as I experience the ultimate freedom of honorable combat. If I and my opponent cannot be seriously injured the combat is meaningless to me so far as potential survival situations are concerned.

I reject philosophy as the whining of old men and the fantasies of soft women hiding behind ideas. I am a barbarian.

My spirit is only free when I fight, write and wonder. I reject all faiths; all religions; all political ideologies; all economic models; all martial arts systems; all beliefs. If I have a religion it is combat. I am a barbarian.

The men in my father’s line have all lived to be about 65. I identify with him, because my mother is thankfully, not a man. In 1996 I killed myself in my mind; made a conscious decision to end my life while killing an enemy. He managed to survive, to escape what he deserved. I oddly found myself content with being dead to the world, a world I have never much liked, full as it is with greed and evil. I resolved then to accomplish as much as possible before I died.

I regard my maximum possible life expectancy to be 65 years. I write as much as possible, even though I have no chance of completing everything I have outlined up to this point, even if I can continue to write at my current pace until the bitter end.

Another goal is to have 1,000 stick-fights. I am at about 630 [Cory having still not tallied my most recent filmed bouts] and can barely use a fork with my stick hand. My reason for this is to gather data on stick-fighting injuries in the hopes that stick-fighting might one day be a real combat sport that spectators will actually pay to see. I am physically below average in every aspect and have had all of my fights in middle-age, beyond the athletic prime. I therefore think that the results that my opponents and sparring partners have and will etch on my body may serve as a baseline for determining gear parameters for a hoped-for class of pro stick-fighters that will be richly rewarded for their sacrifices in the ring.

In any case, my mathematics ability is basically limited to counting out a fallen fighter. I therefore have no idea how much, in terms of percentage, I have used up of my 65 years. I am now 50. Even though it is difficult to get out of bed, and I suffer about 5 concussions and 7 ankle sprains a year, I am still beating the piss out of tough, skilled, highly conditioned young men. At an age/income level where my chances of acquiring remarkable conquests among the females of the species are dismal at best, I suppose you civilized martial arts people might understand why this old dog is loathe to give up combat. In any case, even in my current concussed state, I reckon that with only 15 of my 65 years not used up, that I am mostly dead on the physical level. I’ve been dead socially for over a decade. I have not been fit to compete or even spar in boxing for 10 years. There will certainly come a time when I can no longer carry my stick out onto the floor. When that day comes it is time to die. I refuse to cling to an unfulfilling life. I’m a barbarian, and I will die that way.

I like your fighters better than I like just about anything, so you don’t have to worry about me hurting them in sparring.

I am not a teacher, so you don’t have to worry about me ‘stealing’ them away.

If you are anywhere near normal than there is a lot about what I wrote above that will cause a pang of dislike or two. Express your disapproval of my savage perspective through your students as they beat me up and prove the superiority of your method. That, Martial Arts Masters, would constitute a symbiotic relationship, all of us getting what we want.

If you are truly curious as to what the below average human male body can endure and still thrive in a combat environment, read Winter of a Fighting Life, my knucklehead memoir available for sale on this page. I promise to use the proceeds to purchase highly processed and easily consumable food stuffs.

Barbarically yours,

James, 7/8/13