MMA Is Never Having To Say You Are Sorry

In a lifetime of 62 years, I have seen many fads come and go.

From the Captain Video ring I waited for that never arrived in the mail, to the pink hula-hoop my German shepherd—Kasey—got more use out of than I did, I have watched fads come and go.

Types of candy (wax lips, colorful candy dots on paper strips), various diets (grapefruit to Atkins), and yes, even sports (backyard badminton to curling). 

For many of the capricious choices I have made during my life, I am truly sorry.

Not so with MMA.

Readers have lauded some of my favorite choices of warriors, of whom I am obsessed with watching and reporting, and others have damned me for not being "honorable" and dissing their favorites.

Life is short, and for the choices I have made, I will not say I am sorry.

How have I come to be so dedicated to a sport I have never experienced and will never take part in? Well, that is as much a mystery to me as it is to everyone else, including my family.

Perhaps it goes back to the first grade. I was very skinny and had almost platinum blond hair and fair, white skin. I looked like a faded photograph. My insignificant presence was noted by a neighborhood bully, much older and bolder than I. He relished stalking me, and he preyed upon my shyness and fears.

This was just before my father, a former Navy hero, died of a heart attack at the age of 36.

My father shared my humiliation, and had he been a lesser man, he might have taken my problem to the boy's parents. Rather than doing this, he tried his best to teach me self-defence. 

Catching my brother's leg as he tried to kick me one day, my father demonstrated how to take someone down. It was very effective in pissing off my mother and preventing my brother from kicking me again, fearing that I might have actually mastered one of my father's lessons, but alas, in those days, I was no fighter.

God intervened for me when the boy was killed on the train tracks. He was watching an approaching train and was hit from behind by another.

After my father died, and especially when I gained height and finally put on weight, I did learn how to fight to defend my brother and friends, although I never picked fights in and around the neighborhood.

In college, I dreamed of taking up martial arts, but they were not offered at the college I eventually chose.

For years, I dealt with anger problems, but luckily my husband-to-be, or other circumstances, kept me from becoming a brawler.

A neighbor shot my beloved dog Kasey and held a .38 caliber police special pointed at my head. Rather than run for my husband's shotgun and blowing him to hell, I settled for shooting him down in court when he told the judge of pointing his gun at my head because in anger I pointed my finger at him—to which I replied, "Yes, but my finger was not loaded."

At a rodeo, a man pinched my best friend Janet on the ass, and I found myself in a fight with four men. Luckily, as I was planning to throw the man through the plate-glass window, good sense got the better of the man, who was drunk, and he and his friends left.

A trucker sitting at the counter next to me apologised, saying, "I would have liked to help you, but I have a bad heart."

I have been in several actual scuffles since then, with little more than x-rays and long-lasting bruises to show for it. God must love me, or else he is just very tolerant of foolish people who over estimate their own abilities.

MMA, however, is real for me, and not rehearsed, well-choreographed entertainment. I have my heroes that are skilled in the art of fighting, and they suffer real injuries, shedding real blood at times.

But there are rules, weight classes, and they are not merely victims of life's bullies. They have practiced the martial arts my father sought to teach me and have become masters of their craft. Also, they know what they are faced with and have chosen it as their life's work.

Consequently, I am not sorry for my MMA obsession or my choice of heroes. For me, they reflect my father's image and invoke my memories of his early lessons.

I can guarantee you that my father would be sitting next to me, enjoying his lessons with me if he were alive today.

And I am not ever going to say I am sorry.