After nearly nine years of studying various disciplines of martial arts, it finally happened.

I got in a fight.

Since I got into the combat arts, I haven't had a single scuffle. Before that, I got in a couple, but it seemed like after I started training, all the battles or would-be battles just evaporated. This time I wasn't so lucky.

I was in a bar in Denver, where I'd been making my residence off and on for the last ten months. I'd been hanging out with my friends and girlfriend, tossing back a few, when I noticed a guy on the other side of the bar being kind of belligerent. I paid him little attention, but just turned around to look at him to see what he was up to. My girlfriend had left to walk one of the girls being harassed across the street and returned after a couple minutes. When she explained what the aforementioned belligerent guy had been up to, I turned around and looked at him again to see what he was doing. This time, we locked eyes and I didn't glare, didn't stare, just looked at him. He smirked. I, being about eight sheets to the wind and in more of a peaceful mood than anything, just turned around and paid him no mind.

Next thing I know, this guy comes charging across the bar, shouting: "Hey! Hey! Hey, why you lookin' at me like I'm crazy?!" I paid no attention to him until his last sentence, at which time I turned around to face him. Halfway through my turn, he clocked me. First in the lip, then in the jaw, then behind the ear. Immediately, I shot in and double under-hooked him. With little effort, I crunched him down to the ground and mounted him. As I was stabilizing, he lifted his head up and headbutted me in the eye. Then, just before I could start raining down punches, three guys pulled me off of him.

It was strange just then. I knew I'd just been fighting, but the whole experience was rather surreal. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy as I looked at him. I mean, here was a guy I'd never seen before in my life, who obviously had something wrong with him (I'd later find out he had a habit of trying to pick fights), and all I could think was: `Man, this was stupid. We could have just talked about this.' But it was too late and any hope of reconciliation was long gone. Also, I knew once I'd mounted him, it was all but over. There was no way he was going to rock me off of him, so in every way that mattered to me, he'd lost.

Nonetheless, my immediate priorities were consoling my girlfriend, who was devastated from having to witness such a spectacle, and tending to my lip, which would later get four stitches and my eye, which was black and blue for a week. While the whole thing was an interesting experiment, it was so utterly pointless. However, I would like to thank my friend Greg Rabbitt, for getting me into martial arts, Krishna Mirjah, for introducing me to grappling, Bruce Lee, the Gracies, the Shamrocks, Muhammed Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mike Tyson and all the great fighters who have both inspired and enlightened me. You probably saved my life, or at the very least, you saved me from getting knocked out. In the end, I learned a great deal about both myself and my ongoing struggle to understand violence.

I have much to discuss in the New Year and I can't wait to share it with you. For now, have a good Christmas, and, as ever, keep on rollin'.

Diami J. Virgilio
December, 2002
kneeblock@yahoo.com