A lesson learned...and a decision made.

So, it's been about 4 months since the last time I've written, and about 5 months since that fight, and to be perfectly honest with you all, it's still something that I think about on a daily basis. As I said in the last blog I wrote about it, it was something that I had really truly put my heart into, and although I lost honestly, doing the best with the tools that I had to work with, the fact that I couldn't come through still eats at me. As I had said in personal emails before the match, I had a very strong idea I was not supposed to win that fight. I knew that going in. I knew it was going to hurt, I knew I had an injured right hand going in, and I knew that the chips were stacked against me, but even so, if I knew all the obstacles I had to face, then strategically, I should have been able to find a way around them all. Besides that, I could read my opponent well enough. I could see what he was thinking, I figured out what his weaknesses were, and even injured, I still had enough strength and drive to pull off a win. But I didn't.
Having fought to a tight split decision, I certainly didn't do badly, but the question of WHY I lost was up until recently still burning in my soul.
That is, until I was staying with a friend (and business mentor) in Kanagawa (outside of Tokyo) and I stumbled upon a text called, "A Book of Five Rings". I had been interested in it because this text had been key in the development of the Japanese mentality on fighting and, in recent years, the bible of Japanese business practice.

As both a martial artist and a businessman, it was something I had heard of myself, but before reading it, I actually didn't know very much about it. Apparently, the book itself was written 400 years ago by Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest Samurai who ever lived, and a man who by the age of 30 had killed over 60 opponents in 1 on 1 duels. (Half of whom he beat with nothing but a wooden practice sword, when his opponents were wielding real blades). Although I wasn't looking for it at the time (which is usually how it goes), the answer began to present itself as I read through it, and took it in.
The reason I lost that fight, didn't have to do with my style of fighting, my techniques, or my injuries. I lost because of my philosophy on fighting itself.

It took me until now to realize it fully, but when I was coming in my life in Martial Arts in a local school in Michigan, (which emphasized personal development and NOT competition), by the time I was 17 I was already physically larger, taller and stronger than a lot of the people there, (but still relatively new to athletics and not totally familar with my body), and I had a habit of hurting people without meaning to. As such, I felt like I was regularly repremanded for not having control, 'bullying', or 'showing off' when most of the time, I was just trying to give 100%.
Anyway, to make a long story short, despite whatever strengths I had developed in (and out of) the ring over the past 13 years of martial arts training, everything and I mean EVERYTHING I've done has always been overshadowed by the fact that I constantly afraid of hurting someone or being labeled as a bully because of my size.

In competitions in the states, I had usually done well in spite of it (more or less because I was more tenacious- and in later years- smarter), but not necessarily because I was aggressive at all. In fact, quite the opposite...In some 30 or more martial arts competitions I'd won or at least medaled in, I'd never actually fought to win. I simply fought to learn. And whether I was conscious of it or not, I always held back.

As I read however, the one thing the author emphasized over and over was that the point of fighting is simply to win. And to do so beyond any shadow of a doubt. According to that thought system, learning happens along the way. NOT the other way around. As such, and if that is the mentality of the martial artists around me out here, (and given the way I've seen fighters brutalizing each other out here, I'm guessing that it is), then that is the mentality that I need to adobt myself. If I want to prove myself among fighters out here, then there can be no more holding back.

Futhermore, I've also come to realize that insolong as I am living out here, it's unlikely I will ever have a fair fight. I don't say that, because I'm black and they're Japanese, I say that because I'm a person of one race, living among a peoples of another. And aside from having studied 'in-group' biases as part of my major in school, I have enough personal experience with being 'the outsider' to know that more so than not, people are generally biased towards their own group whether they know it or not. Especially out here. As such, if people see me in the ring, and they don't know me personally, I'm already 'the bad guy'. That being the case, if I want to win, there can be no close matches. Period. Everyone watching has to know beyond any shadow of a doubt who the winner is.

Although had I won, this fight may have very well been my last one, I've decided that as opportunities present themselves, I'm going back into the ring next year. Not just because I feel I have one final lesson to learn from the ring, but because with that fight being unfair as it was, all the bullshit I had to deal with with that toughman contest after that, and the fact that I let myself get fucked out of payment for BOTH of them, I have absolutely NO desire to call it quits before I show anyone, and everyone that I have to that this foreigner isn't going to back down. EVER. I was already beaten to the point that I quit once when I was training in Korea. I'll be fucking damned if it's ever going to happen again.
My right hand still hasn't healed to the point that I can hit with it, so chances are, I'll have to fight without it, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I had always hoped that in walking among different peoples, they would always respect the gentility of character instead of my physical size and strength, but if I have to use that size and strength to gain respect first, so be it. To put it ebonically, "Some mutha fuckas always gotta try to ice skate uphill." As a person, I'll never go out of my way to use, abuse or hurt anyone, from now on, I do what I have to.