Chapter Eight
Anger Is an Energy
Fighters
âName a fighter that everybody could objectively agree is not attractive,â Eugene S. Robinson challenges me. âIâd be surprised; I canât think of one. Iâm not saying theyâre all Calvin Klein models, but itâs rare for me to see a fighter that I donât process as handsome.â
Eugeneâs Skype handle is âHandsome Man.â
Since taking up Muay Thai, Iâve been wondering what the necessary attributes of a fighter are, as venturing into the ring seems to be the ultimate test of self. What powers a pugilistâs urge to go toe-Âto-Âtoe with someone intent on knocking them out, thus risking serious injury, brain damage and even death? Maybe impulsivity. Maybe some spite. Maybe even a kind of death wish bravado, or a long-Âheld fear of having something to prove. But surely, more than in any other sport, all roads lead back to rage.
I decide that Eugene, the author of Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-ÂKicking But Were Afraid Youâd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking (2007), and a long-Âtime hyperbolic commentator on the world of biff, ought to know.
Eugene loves, loves, loves a fight, be it in the street, on the mat, in an underground fight club or on stage in his guise as front man for San Francisco experimental rock band Oxbow (just itching for a heckler to kick off). He writes with a fighterâs flairââTopographical maps of the eveningâs fun had spread out all over my suit in bloodied rivuletsââand acts as nimbly as he thinks, agreeing to an interview the moment he reads my message and participating in it on the fly, while driving home after a run.
Is his hypothesis rightâthat to be a fighter requires a lantern jaw rather than a burning grudge? In the past week Iâve seen two veteran fighters, Ken âThe Worldâs Most Dangerous Manâ Shamrock and Dan âThe Beastâ Severn, make cameos at a wrestling match. Ken and Dan are action-Âfigure handsome, all thrusting chins and barrel chests. Dan even has a Burt Reynolds-Âstyle moustache. But they seem to be ridiculous outliers of masculinity. So instead I sift through a mental Rolodex of cauliflower-Âeared, railroad-Ânosed bad boys and choose Chris âThe Cripplerâ Leben, whose wild benders have lent him quite the ruddy bloat.
âIf I was a casting director, I would cast Chris all the time,â Eugene protests. âClassic Middle America look. Nobody would call him a bad-Âlooking guy.â
Many kids are drawn to martial arts because of their anxieties over not measuring up. By contrast, Eugene argues that combat athletesâboxers, kickboxers and MMA fightersâbear the burden of being too handsome, which naturally leads them to become targets in bar rooms and parking lots. âYou have to develop a carapace so that people donât fuck with you,â he explains. âI mean, thatâs how I grew up.â
Which illustrates well that we all bring our own subjectivity and experiences to theories on why people fight.
Eugene was born into a complicated family and raised in Brooklyn in the 1970s. His grandmother became pregnant with his father at the age of thirteen, and her rapistâEugeneâs grandfatherâwas a lifelong criminal, up to the neck in extortion, gambling and loan-Âsharking. Eugeneâs troubled father disowned him, and his relationship with his mother was fraught. Sometimes she was âall Diana Ross coolâ; other times she was hot-Âtempered.
âI was a fairly good kid and stayed between the lines in a lot of ways, but then my motherâs relationship with my stepfather started to go down the toilet,â he says. âMy mother wasnât a hitter, but she was a ranter. Sheâd follow me from room to room, arguing about something or other, and if I looked upset she would go at me. I ended up suppressing and suppressing, developing an unhealthy relationship to anger.â Or, as he puts it in his book, âvast wellsprings of rage.â
For Eugene, âanimal angerâ became a calling, âbut well before that, it started out as an emotional need.â And he gets seriously tetchy if he doesnât see that same base instinct rampaging through the veins of other so-Âcalled fighters.
Like the time he was loading out after a show in Maine and a couple of dudes tried to rile him in the parking lot, one of them hurling a can of beer. âI finally said, âIf you want to fight me, thereâs one thing you could do and one thing only: say one more word to me.ââ When the man did, Eugene stepped down from the van onto the curb and the guy got a sense of his stature. âI saw fear in his eyes, and thatâs when I got angry for the first time, because I wanted him to have the strength of his conviction,â Eugene says. âI want you to be fully fucking committed to this prospect.â Irked, Eugene knocked out that man, and the other ran off.
Or the time he took part in a jujitsu competition and was matched with a man clearly content with just winning a participation ribbon. On his way to the mat, Eugene heard the schmuckâs wife urging, âCome on baby, you can do it.â
âLike you do your best and thatâs all that matters!â Eugene spits. âThat half-Âmeasure thing gets on my nerves. I just smashed the guy, threw him down, side control, got him in a Kimura, tapped him out. And I was like, Goddamn you. Stand up! Walk! Do not go gently into this good night!â
Itâs a stance a million miles away from the dojos of traditional martial arts, upon whose walls there will usually be a pledge that the techniques learned within will not be exploited, and the ethos is to leave the world a better place, not smash it to smithereens. Eugene adds hastily, âBut donât mischaracterize my attitude as, Oh, I donât have time for the weak. I just donât like quitting. Thatâs why Iâve been in the same band since 1988. And the last five years of my marriage were like, âFuck it. If she can take it, I can take it.ââ
He laughs uproariously. âYou canât lose if you donât quit.â
Throughout our conversation, Eugene refers to the âemotional contentâ of fighting, and yet when he talked to the famous interviewees in his book about âbloodlustâ and âan emotional delight in domination,â he found them unwilling to deconstruct their urges. He puts that down to professional fighters being so accustomed to what they do that they no longer examine the emotional underpinnings; nor is there much time in their schedule for introspection. âAnd if there is, itâs not something that youâre going to share with the journalist,â he says.
So Iâm lucky to find someone as frank as bare-Âknuckle boxer Christine Ferea, who also has a long career in Muay Thai and MMA behind her. Christine agrees to an interview, but wants to know a few things first. Who am I? Why did I become a journalist? What is my interest in combat sports? How did I find her?
Itâs a logical approach for someone who has to study an opponent so closely that it borders on obsession. Bare-Âknuckle boxing is conducted over two-Âminute rounds, so thereâs no time to feel out the other fighter in the ring. Instead, Christine stalks an opponent for months beforehand by watching their old fights, observing their temperament and tics, and reading their insults on Instagram. It makes for a strange kind of intimacy.
With Christine having hit thirty-Âseven, everything is riding on this bid for a legacy in bare-Âknuckle, as her Instagram posts scouting for men to spar with in the Vegas area suggest. When we speak, her most pressing concern is Helen Peralta, a Dominican Republic native, raised in New York. The two last clashed in August 2019, at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. Both ended with swollen faces: Helen in her gladiator-Âstyle shorts and tight braids, with a cut at the corner of her eye that had already caused the lid to bulge into a slit; Christine with her MISFIT shorts, sharp undercut and a contusion on either cheekbone.
It was a close battle, but the unanimous decision in Helenâs favor marked Christineâs first loss in the sport. Naturally, sheâs hungry for a rematch, but the event has been postponed because of the pandemic.
âWhatâs the plan?â I ask, meaning I assume it will be rescheduled.
âKill her,â Christine says. âMake sure she doesnât get up for about thirty seconds after I hit her.â
Christine has the backstory of a fighter in a telemovie: a street kid, in and out of trouble and eventually prison, who found her calling in a jailhouse fight gym and thus avoided her dismal destiny as a homicide or overdose statistic. Her aesthetic is still very much âstreet thugââa hangover from childhood, when her family moved from San Jose to a neighborhood in Las Vegas where gang culture was rife. Local guys targeted her brother, and Christine found herself rising to the bait in his defense. âI would be like, âDude! Theyâre going to keep fucking with you! Iâm going with youâyou roll with me and my homegirls.â I didnât know better, I just th...