Fight by Kyle Cashulin

Groping around in my camo cargo shorts, I pull out the roll of athletic tape. As an amateur fighter, I need to wrap my wrists myself. The tape feels very different from the cotton wraps that I use in training. It feels solid and impermeable. Next I look in the mirror. I smear Vaseline over my face so that any blows will slide off instead of rupturing my skin. My only thought is how bad this will be for my complexion, which makes me laugh. After a few minutes of shadowboxing and working on the bag, my friend tells me it’s time. Anxiety blossoms in my stomach, but I shake it off. Why am I nervous? I’m going to win, god damn it! I’m going to impose my will!
The private gym is high-ceilinged, dirty, and only has a few metal folding chairs strewn around the ring. It’s an underground fight. Two-dozen people mill around the ring. No one sits. Everyone here is an amateur fighter, a trainer, or both. It’s the best kind of audience, but a tough crowd to impress.
My nerves might be a little frayed, but I’m confident and composed. The same can’t be said of my opponent. He looks shaken. Head bent, he listens to his trainer give some last minute advice. I notice that his tattoo, a simple tribal arm band, is smaller than mine and isn’t colored in. For some reason this makes me smile, I know I’m going to win.

My first fight happened when I was 12, after my mother moved us to Northern California. Markleeville, a depressing town of 200 residents, sits in the dark foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Completely isolated, the nearest grocery store was a 20 mile drive through the woods. We decided to live 10 miles outside Markleeville next to the Washoe Indian Reservation.
As a chubby white boy from a wealthy family, I was a dead boy walking. The first day a tall kid threw me to the ground and kicked my face, knocking out two of my teeth. But I’m a fast learner, and wanted to be tough as much as the Res kids. I choked back tears, stood up, and spat a wad of blood and mucous on the ground. This impressed the gathering crowd, but I knew that adolescents’ memories or short. I had to learn how to fight. The strength, toughness and will were there, I just needed the skill.
After a few games of Res Ball (a combination of basketball, football and boxing), the tall kid who kicked my ass decided that I wasn’t a bad guy, and we became friends. His father was once a professional boxer, and between rounds of drunkenly beating his son, taught him how to fight. This tall Indian kid would smoke my cigarettes, and teach me boxing and streetfighting. I became passionate about boxing. After five years of training and living on the Res, I completely forgot what it was like to be the underdog.
It was during the summer after my freshman year in college that my interest in fighting was rekindled. My father’s friend, a screenwriter, was doing research for a film about mixed martial arts, and so got the three of us tickets to the Ultimate Fighting Championship 63. Mixed martial arts (or MMA) is a recent phenomenon that has become the world’s fastest growing sport. It allows fighters of different disciplines to test who has the most effective style. Previously, matches were only held within respective styles. A fighter can discover whether his Karate is superior to another man’s kickboxing. For many martial artists, it is the ultimate truth. And the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the place to find out.
Many people compare professional fighting to football or hockey. While these are both intrinsically violent sports, they are fundamentally different in spirit and practice. Other sports have a set objective, such as carrying a football to the end zone. There are rules, regulations, and players act as a team. In fighting, there is no team. When the fighter is in the ring, he is completely alone; he has only himself to rely on. I have heard it referred to as “the most unfiltered form of human competition.” People often refer to sports as a game. A man will say “I’m going home to watch the game.” It’s rare to refer to any kind of professional fighting as a game.
The UFC event was held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The tickets cost more than a thousand dollars a piece, but it was courtesy of Universal Studios. Just walking to the seats was a show in and of itself. Dennis Hof, owner and operator of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch (as seen on HBO’s “Cathouse”), sat next to us accompanied by three stunningly beautiful prostitutes.
A portion part of the crowd were obviously fighters. Every fifth person seemed to have a swollen nose or cauliflower ears. In the restroom, one amateur fighter was serenely draining his cauliflower ear with a hypodermic needle. The beer flowed at a constant rate. Fighters danced with their gorgeous girlfriends to high-energy rock, and everyone was generally having a fantastic time.
The fights were incredible to watch. We were very close to the octagon, so each connecting strike sounded like a baseball bat hitting a hunk of meat. After each fight the opponents would hug (if both were still conscious), congratulate each other, and retire to drink beer and watch the next battle. The most anticipated fight was between Matt Hughes and Renzo Gracie, two of the most famed fighters in the UFC. Gracie made the mistake of giving his back to Hughes, and the fight was over quickly. Gracie was on his stomach on the ground with Hughes mounted on his waist. Hughes cocked back his arm, paused, and let loose a barrage of knockout punches to the sides of Gracie’s head. It was electrifying to see such professional fighting in person. These men were one hundred percent efficient, and showed me the obvious difference between a real fighter and a street brawler. More than ever, I wanted to improve. I decided to try a real fight, in front of a real audience. The question was, how?
I started training in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a modern martial art that is a hybrid of streetfighting and wrestling. It is just as technical as wrestling, and as a sport, has its own rules. It is a technique that is favored by many professional fighters in MMA. My trainer once made a great observation: “If someone who knows Brazilian Jiu-jitsu takes another fighter to the ground, and he doesn’t know Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, it’s like falling into a lake and not knowing how to swim.” This is very true. A skilled Brazilian Jiu-jitsu fighter will have his opponent tapping out before he even registers that he is totally incapacitated. It teaches you how to move on the ground, and how to maneuver your opponent into submissions. If a fighter is trapped in an arm bar, for example, it only take two inches of motion to break their arm at the elbow.
I also took intensive Krav Maga (Hebrew for “combat fighting”). Krav Maga is best described as systemized streetfighting. It is designed to be utterly efficient and wholly destructive. Rather than trying to submit your opponent, the goal is to kill him. Krav Maga was developed by the Israeli Defense Forces, and most professionals regard it as the most effective no-holds-barred fighting system. This method is not accepted in mixed martial arts fights, but gives excellent training on the fundamentals of fighting. It teaches you how to move, hit and punch in all their variations.

I returned to college in New York State, and found a great gym. I committed to training for a real fight. It’s quite difficult to train at the level of intensity needed for a true MMA fight when you’re a student. Real fighters train up to six hours daily, and keep to a strict high-protein diet. Such a regimen was quite impossible for me, but I did my best. Every day I would practice striking for an hour. I would deliver a seemingly endless stream of knees, kicks, elbows and punches until my muscles screamed. On alternate days I would lift weights and develop core strength. Taking a 45 pound plate in each hand, I jogged laps around the school sports center to build a “death grip.” For cardiovascular training I ran from my apartment up a long steep hill that I dubbed “insano-slope.”
My diet consisted of fish, red meat, protein supplements, and gallons of water. The hard work paid off. My strikes became harder and my grip stronger. Most importantly, my endurance seemed endless. I felt that I had tapped newfound inner physical strength.

Finding a way to fight in a controlled setting proved to be difficult. The big problem being that it is illegal to fight in New York without a permit, which means submitting to an endless process of physical examination and bureaucracy. This was impossible for me, as licenses are usually reserved for professionals. A stroke of luck came when I was chatting with a new friend after a workout at the gym. With some reservation, the man told me that he knew a group of amateur fighters who, faced with the same dilemma, organized a monthly fight night. I told him that it sounded like the book “Fight Club,” to which he responded: “Jesus, I knew you’d say that.”
This man became my go-between and found me a place at that month’s fight night. This took more than a little convincing on my proponent’s part, but he vouched for me and I was granted a provisional membership. My assigned opponent was a first-time fighter as well, which was a great comfort. The prospect of fighting a seasoned mixed martial artist was daunting. I thought that if he was a first-time MMA fighter, and didn’t have previous streetfighting experience, I would have an edge.
When Jason said fight night he wasn’t kidding. The night of the fight I was told to meet my friend at a parking garage at two-thirty in the morning. There he handed me directions to the gym where it took place. Thirty minutes later we arrived at a sizable craftsman-style house, comfortably isolated from neighbors. Next to the house was a garage that could have served as a hangar for small aircraft. Cars were parked outside, so I assumed it was the right place.

There is a difference between believing you can win a fight and actually fighting. I’m locked into a staring match with my opponent across the ring. My confidence and adrenaline are spiking. I should have avoided this mental showdown, but it’s too late to back out. I try to make myself badass and intimidating, but the head games seem pointless. We’d see who was tougher in a minute. The referee calls it, we bump gloves, and begin.
My opponent is over-anxious and come out throwing fast, chaotic punches. Several of these connect, and I feel rage swell inside me. Ignoring the attack, I start throwing my own strikes, and we trade punch for punch. But this is a rookie mistake. Swapping punches is like playing “chicken,” where the last man standing only wins because of the thickness of his skull. The unprofessional turn this fight has taken is reflected in the catcalls of the audience.
Backing off, I clear my head and keep my guard up. Advancing cautiously, I throw a few jabs. His guard drops for a moment and I swing for a knockout punch. But before my fist reaches halfway I find myself on the ground, scrambling backwards. My stomach is throbbing. He must have landed a side kick to my abdomen while I was concentrating on the knockout punch. Another rookie mistake. My eyes should have been on been on his chest so that I could see his entire body movement. Instead, I was concentrating on his head and lining up punches.
But he obviously isn’t comfortable on the ground, because I scramble to my feet without any interference. We circle for a few seconds, and I focus on keeping my eyes from looking at where I want to strike. Without thinking I lunge under his guard, grip his right leg and shove forward driving my shoulder into his stomach. My opponent goes down, and the fall knocks the wind from his lungs. He doesn’t raise his legs in time, which allows me to mount his waist. Unable to buck me off and unable to effectively strike, he freezes into a protective guard. By this point I know the fight is over. I throw hard, heavy punches and elbows around his guard until the referee pulls me off. My gloves are smeared with blood, and sure enough, my opponent has a cut across his forehead. Some blood drips from my own face as well, but I couldn’t care less. I throw my arms out, my head back, and breathe deep. I have the option to stay and watch the last fight, but I’m too sore and too full of adrenaline. I drive home, smiling like a maniac the whole way.

The next day everyone I see asks what happened to my face. I dismiss the subject with vague but taunting replies like “let’s just say it’s been a rough night” or “well you should see the other guy!” But I don’t want to publicize my night’s exploit. This is partially because I want to avoid uncomfortable questions about where and who I fought. I can’t bear the thought of my friends patronizing me for doing something they can’t possibly identify with. Growing up in a fight culture has instilled in me, for better or for worse, a mindset that is completely alien to most students of East Coast liberal arts schools. But it’s alright. I didn’t fight for bragging rights. I fought to become a better fighter.