Theme Park at its Darkest

Ben Edwards with his trainer jamie McCuaig, behind the scenes at Glory 16.

“Why do I fight? I had a great childhood; I’m not an angry person, but I love fighting. Maybe it’s genetic. As a kid, I had big self-esteem problems, connected to my weight. Sure, that’s part of it. But there’s more to it than that.

“Before you fight and you’re sitting out the back in the dressing room, there’s a morbid feeling. It’s the fight-or-flight response kicking in. Your arms feel heavy because your arms are full of blood. The butterflies in your stomach are caused by the blood leaving all your non-essential organs so you can defend yourself, or run away to survive.

“When the nerves kick in, it can be overwhelming. I calm myself down by thinking about how all the great fighters in history felt that way before they fought. The more nervous I am the sharper I am, and I find that helps me.

“Sooner or later everyone asks the question, ‘Why do I do this to myself?”

This entry was posted on May 30, 2014 at 8:48 am and is filed under Kickboxing, Observation, Real Men with tags Ben Edwards, fight or flight, Fighting, Glory 16, Kickboxing, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler, self esteem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.