Napoleon once said. ‘After the age of thirty a man’s spirit is
not made for war.’
I read this quote recently in the
excellent book ‘The Dog rounds’
written by Elliott Worsell.
The man quoting the above statement
in the book was ex WBC lightweight champion boxer Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini.
Ray held the title from 1982 to
1984.He was one of the toughest and bravest boxers I have ever seen.
If you don’t know about this man,
then I urge you read the book and watch his fights on You tube.
The subject of the book is about
boxers who have killed in the ring. It is hard hitting and poignant subject
matter.
Mancini had experienced this himself
when he defended his title against South Korean challenger Duk Koo Kim on the
13th November 1982.
The 21-year-old Mancini scored a tko
in the 14th round of a brutal fight.
Kim shortly after slipped into a coma
died from a subdural hematoma.
It was a tragic incident that
supposedly sparked the change to 12 round fights from the longer 15.
Mancini was never the same fighter
again.
Now at 57 years old he explained what
in his opinion the quote by Napoleon meant.
He says that after 30 years of age
your values change, your ideology changes, everything changes.
Slowly little by little the fire in
your belly that burnt bright for combat begins to diminish as other things in
your life become more important.
This happens little by little and we
don’t always want to acknowledge this fact.
For men like Mancini who faced his darkest
fear you can understand were he is coming from.
Many soldiers that have faced the
real horrors of war will feel the same. The same could be said for law
enforcement officers.
But what about the statement in
relation to all you Martial artists out there. Is it true?
My personal thoughts on the statement
and what Napoleon and Mancini are saying is that if you have experienced real
combat and been tested hard there will be a point where you know it is time to
call it a day.
There will be a time when the body
aches constantly. Where you no longer relish or wish to endure pain.
A time when training and preparation
get tougher and tougher.
A time when you no longer get that
buzz.
I am talking about fighting at the
highest levels. Putting your ass ,your reputation and even your life on the
line.
Not many people go there. Those that
do view life differently.
Special individuals fight on into their
later years, but they are few and far between.
What is their motivation. Money? Kudos?
Many others carry on fighting easy
opponents or ‘sandbagging’ their ways through competition against lesser
opponents kidding themselves they can still cut it with the big boys. Not true.
At the other end of the spectrum you
get deluded guys wandering off to la la land doing this ‘no touch’ knockout
bullshit and brain washing others to join in the fucking debacle. They are a
disgrace to the Martial arts world.
I grew up admiring a whole host of
seemingly invincible fighters. Most are now sdaly dead or grew old and retired.
Think of the fighters you revered in
their Heydays.
Eg. Ali, Tyson, Duran, Hearns of
boxing. Liddel, Couture, Ortiz , Jackson, Silva of MMA.
Could you ever see a time when they
would be beaten, humbled or exposed?
What about Lenny McLean or Roy Shaw?
Both legendary fighters but sadly no
longer here. No matter who you are the reality is you are born to die.
Eventually these fighters stepped down and a
new breed of younger, hungrier one’s emerged.
We all at one time were the ‘New Boys’, the ‘Trailblazers’, the ‘latest
news’.
Time waits for no man and it is our
toughest opponent and ultimately are final nemesis.
This realisation is a bitter pill to
swallow for all fighters who in their prime could piss napalm and crap thunder.
Also, if you are training hard and I
mean balls to the wall tough you would never envisage a time were the sofa and
the television (not love island though) looks a more tempting proposition than
going to the gym or dojo.
Now those who have really been there
and done a bit can eventually square it away because you have nothing left to
prove.
The ego has been crushed on the edge
of a mat somewhere many years ago and you know what it is like to win and you
will also know what it is like to lose.
You will also know unfortunately what
it is like to have your ass handed to you by a better fighter, no matter what
the arena may be.
When you are young and full of
testosterone you won’t even think about this. When you are the young buck ready
and willing to prove yourself that sort of shit doesn’t enter the equation.
As young men and we have all been
there. We think we are invincible and that we are the ‘dogs’. We have the swagger, the mouth and more front than Blackpool.
This is all only natural. Only later
in life if you are clued up will you realise most of the time you were a prick
and probably led a charmed life and somehow avoided some ‘real deal’
crossing
your path that would have ripped you a new arsehole. Praise to the ignorance of
youth.
The Dog thinks he is
king until he walks into the jungle and hears the roar of the Tiger.
If you were a real player back in the
day as you get older you get smarter. You keep your head down. You go out of
your way to avoid conflict or confrontation.
As my old jujutsu instructor Micky
Upham was fond of saying. ‘You have got to keep it real.’
For me personally I enjoy my life and
my family way too much to let some Neanderthal make me lose my liberty. I have
more important things to do in my life than to be fighting. (Like working out
how to get Netflix’s up on the television).
Age should alter you and
change your thought process. Don’t get me wrong I still love the Martial arts
but I have other areas of my life now that interest me just as much if not
more.
I personally no longer obsess about
fighting and combat.
I truly have been there and done it
when it comes to Martial arts, fighting etc. My book When we were Warriors, covers my journey in detail.
But as the saying goes ‘Every new beginning is some beginnings end.’
The mantle moves on. The throne of
power shifts. How you view things depends on where you are in your journey.
A big lesson I have learned from
Martial arts is most people can’t fight sleep.
They are mostly all front and bluff
and when it comes to the physical they is a lot of huffing and puffing,
swinging and fucking falling over.
I have trained with individuals that
have the punching and kicking power of a nuclear missile. Others that could choke you senseless in a
blink of an eye and make you wet you pants. Yet there are others that could
bend, twist and snap you like a dried noodle without breaking sweat. These and
their like are beautiful ,violent poetry in motion. They are stone wall killers
if need be.
Until you mix with these people you
will never know just how fucking good they are because this is all they do day
in and day out. So, they have fucking unbelievable skills.
What I am trying to say is if ‘Mr
Billy Big bollocks’ with a limited belief system on how tough he is cuts one of
these individuals up in his car he better pray they don’t get out and he better
prey that he is not such a dim wanker that he gets out.
The bottom line is you really don’t
want to cross their paths it will only mean pain and suffering for you.
In any pursuit in life there is a
hierarchy of skill levels.
There is average, decent, good, very
good, excellent, awesome, out of this fucking world.
Think of the England football team in
the recent World cup. Their players and performances although way beyond what
most of us expected were mostly good, occasionally very good. What about Belgium.
Croatia, France? Unfortunately, they were another level.
If you only ever swim in the sea of
average or good you will never ever have a clue what excellent or above looks
like.
After all there was a time were we
thought the earth was flat.
As Bruce lee said. ‘Your truth is not
my truth’.
If you do decide to swim into the
deeper unknown territory it is fucking terrifying because your mind has just
seen and encountered something you didn’t even know existed. But you will learn
a valuable lesson believe me.
There have been many times where I
have swum with the big sharks and I found out quickly the colour of adrenalin is brown!
When you do this, it is a great
leveller and it lets you know where you are on the mountain. Sometimes you
realise you haven’t even got out of base camp1.
As you move up the mountain you will
encounter less people as the air gets thinner. Only the very best reach the
top.
I have just returned from a holiday
aboard and the hotel swimming pool area is a major source of male machismo for
me. I could sit for hours and study people.
There are many deluded people
wandering around thinking they are planting the flag on the top of Everest but
in reality, there are still in their local park walking over an anthill.
You have the young bucks strutting
around with their gym chiselled physics, showing off their ‘guns’ and tattoos
inwardly steering at any middle aged out of shape male. Safe or maybe not safe
in the knowledge that their muscles are their suit of armour. Naive in the fact
that pumping iron = they can fight.
You then have the forty plus adolescences
prowling about with his beer belly. Arms splayed as if they are carrying to
rolls of carpet under them. The tough 1000-yard stare. Walking like they has
shit themselves and not quite finished. Their best days well behind them but
still living in a deluded fantasy world.
I often question what do these guys
all build their confidence and swagger on. Are they truly undercover ‘killers’
or have they been watching to many Jason Stratham films?
Either they belief system is built on
1000’s of hours of training and fighting or it is seriously flawed, and they
are really paper tigers never having faced a real fighter before?
You see I have spent a life time of
training every conceivable way to give another human being if warranted it more
pain than they could even imagine. I have trained with the best in the world. I
have tasted victory and defeat. I have trained blood, sweat and tears to
acquire the skills I possess and every day I still strive to be better. I know
my strengths and weaknesses. I also know my limitations’. I know how I cope in
the heat of ‘battle’.
Yet I still don’t stroll around like
‘Bruce Lee I am fucking hard super ninja
turtle. ’But every day somewhere I see these guys. Aggressive and arrogant
bullies. Their over inflated egos give them false confidence built on what?
Mike Tyson once famously said.
‘Everybody has a game plan until they get hit in the face.’
Most of these idiots would fold like
a pack of cards if you belted them and go crawling home to find their mummy.
I often would like to ask one of
these individuals. ‘What do you do for a living 8 hour a day? Because for as
many years as I care to remember myself and fellow professional martial artists
train, spar, fight, study, watch, talk, live and breathe ‘breaking people in
half’ for 8 hours a day. What did you say you did?’
As I mentioned there are people out
there whose daily job is to train potentially how to break, maim and kill
another human being and they are fucking unbelievably good at it. Their
confidence is built on 1000’s of hours of hitting, bending, slamming, twisting
and breaking bodies. They are fucking wrecking machines. Yet these individuals
can walk past you on the street and you will never know.
They won’t be wearing a rash guard or
Muay Thai shorts in the street. They won’t be snarling, posturing or dragging
their knuckles, but fuck with them and you will lose.
I remember once Geoff Thompson
saying. When you encounter these arseholes and you let them walk away from you
then you have allowed them (rather sportingly I might add) to live another day.
I thank God that I have developed
that restrain otherwise I probably would have been in one of her majesty’s
hotel long ago.
I hate rude, arrogant bullies. They
are the scum of the earth, period.
Every time I hit a bag I always
imagine one of their smirking faces on it. It keeps me highly motivated!
Martial arts along with teaching me
how to defend myself it taught me to be humble and keep my ego in check.
Martial arts don’t make you invincible. There may be a time when you feel you
are but that doesn’t last very long, so get over yourself. ‘Every dog has his
day.’
If you train in a ‘real combat art’
you will have a distinct advantage over ‘Joe Public’ but only if you are also
clued up streetwise and not bound by any rules or limitations about what you
should or could do to save your life.
As self defence guru Rory Miller
states.
‘Capability is a physical skill. You
learnt and train a strike, throw or choke. Capacity is the ability to do it.
Whatever it takes. Do you know where your capacity lies?’
As we grow older as Martial artists
some of our memories of our past glories can be viewed through Rose tinted glasses. Our stories become
like the fisherman’s tale. Better and better with each telling.
The older I get the
better I was.
My advice is to be a realist. Be
humble. Don’t be a dick. God knows there are enough of them out there already. There
must be an assembly line running them off by the fucking hundreds
somewhere. Arseholes R us I believe it’s called.
Realise you are not invincible and
except your skills will erode. Avoid conflict and violence wherever possible
but if it comes knocking on your door and wants to come into your life if you truly
know yourself and know your enemy then fucking snuff it out as quickly as
possible by whatever means and then go back to your beer. ‘Walk softly and
carry a big stick.’
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you
need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the
enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know
neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Sun Tzu, The
Art of War
