the art of thuggery

Can aesthetic beauty be communicated through an act of barbarism? Is there artistry in the timing of a face intercepting a punch meant to bludgeon? Boxing is a dying sport, a spectacle that satiated the blood lust of the masses for centuries. Can I find solace in the discomfort and challenge it promises? That, my friends, is completely up to me.

I am at a crossroads, yet again: Boxing or MMA? When I began my journey into the fight game, a little over year ago, I asked the same question. I decided on boxing because it's got a smaller range of skills to learn, which is beneficial at my advanced age, but then I began training MMA. I'm more decisive then a potential GOP candidate. And then I discovered alcohol... Fast forward to now and I'm slowly weening myself off the bottle and contemplating the finer points of punching peoples faces in. It's not easy being an ultra violent pacifist, but someone's gotta do it.

I hear boxing calling to me: "Come here Loren, become a practitioner of the sweet science. You've got WMDs where most only have guns, a black hole for a heart, and the business savvy of a Don King. You were built for this." Cus De Mato, legendary trainer of Mike Tyson, once said: "A boy comes to me with a spark of interest. I feed the spark and it becomes a flame. I feed the flame and it becomes a fire. I feed the fire and it becomes a roaring blaze." I'm on my way to becoming a fucking blazing inferno at the moment (thanks in no small part to Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey, The Wire season 4 wow this TV show continues work me over, The Fighter and my cousin's unending enthusiasm about the sport).

I am a thug, a butcher, an incandescent intellect. Why am I doing this? Because I need to do something. Life is boring in the relative safety of normalcy. The human condition is pleasure and pain. Sex and Violence. I can no longer function within the former parameters that I have set out for myself. Punch on mother fuckers.