Book Notes: “A Fighter’s Heart”

May 16, 2020

One of my favorite books that I read this year. I’m a casual MMA fan. I follow the subreddit but couldn’t tell you who, like, the Bellator champions are.

Share knowledge with other people, from one domain to another

It is one of the more interesting facets of MMA: the democracy. In MMA, there are no grand masters, no belts, no fixed ranking system. Knowledge is shared, so good strikers work out with good grapplers, and they teach each other. Far superior fighters like Tony gave me help all the time, and then, sometimes I would tell him about something I’d seen Thai fighters do in Thailand, and instead of dismissing me, he and the others listened carefully. They were willing to take knowledge from anywhere.

Read, listen, but practice to know it intuitively (Directness)

And there is a tremendous difference between knowing something by having read or been told it, and knowing something, by having it become clear to you through intuition.

Feeling through fighting

Fighting is a way to feel, an anti–video game, a way to force some-thing to happen. That’s what brought me back to it, because when I’ve fought someone, I know something has happened. How many days of your life pass you by that you could take or leave? When nothing really happened?

Gameness

• Good video of Masvidal 9 years ago with Ariel Helwani and they’re talking about Masvidal getting choked out
• He gives credit where its due and talks about re-watching it and what he would’ve done differently

once someone realizes that his position is untenable, he’ll resign. In this way, if your dog is losing badly but still game, you should pick him up, because you can breed him on. If he hasn’t quit, pick him up. Real dogmen don’t need to see a dog die. “If you’ve got a decent dog, you would never let him die—it ain’t about winning, it’s about not quitting,” John said. “If I got five generations of something that won’t quit, I might get something.”