Transcriber: Marco Fleichacher Reviewer: 新 陈
Fighting.
Maybe some of you think of it something like this.
Alcohol fuelled, unnecessary, or outdated and unnecessarily violent.
But I’m hoping that by the end of the talk
you'll see it somewhat more like this.
The chess analogy is not perfect, but it’ll work for now.
So this is me.
It’s my first exposure... cute right... to martial arts.
I—as a teenager—I didn’t stick with karate.
I was more interested in spending time with my friends and ball sports,
that kind of thing.
Wasn’t until I left university and went abroad
that I reconnected with martial arts.
I'd heard about this thing called cage fighting before,
but it wasn’t until I saw a live mixed martial arts event
for the first time that I was really hooked.
And what really grabbed me is that there was so much to learn.
It wasn't just hit harder or be tougher.
It was hit in this way, at this time, to get this reaction,
in order to set up the next thing that you want to do.
So in order to explain how something as seemingly simple as fighting
could really be so complex,
I'd like to tell you the story about the origins of judo.
Jigoro Kano was born in 1860 in Japan, and as a skinny and unathletic youth,
he was often bullied at school.
This led him to look for a way to defend himself.
He stumbled upon jiu-jitsu, a martial art originally developed for the battlefield,
like many martial arts.
But what’s special about Jigoro Kano is that he sought to
incorporate different aspects from different schools and styles.
To me, this was someone looking to the future.
He wasn't just satisfied with learning what was already known.
He wanted to build and develop that knowledge base.
It was specifically when he was beaten by other practitioners in training
that he realised that there were aspects to be improved.
Real competition—sometimes you lose.
Much like life.
This is one of the good things that games can teach us.
Jigoro Kano didn’t take these losses as a defeat,
but rather as an indication that
there were aspects of his style that needed to be improved.
Many martial arts have this aspect of live training.
Judokas call it randori. Boxers call it sparring.
Jiu-jitsu players call it rolling—they do actually roll on the ground.
And the there’s a caveat to this
because the striking arts come with an extra bit of caution
because of the risk of brain trauma,
despite what my childhood hero, Rocky, might say,
“It’s totally about not getting hit.”
This is great advice for life, but a terrible advice for boxing.
So, do your absolute best no to get hit.
But do practise what you’re learning.
It’s specifically this live training aspect
that helped Jigoro Kano develop his system.
How do you know something works
unless you try it against someone who’s trying to stop you?
Martial arts is theory, but also practice.
Live sparring is the litmus test for any kind of theory.
This is why boxing is often called the sweet science.
There have been uncountable experiments of what works and what doesn’t work
when two people try to hit each other.
So you might remember that
the Jiu-jitsu that Jigoro Kano was learning,
was originally developed for the battlefield,
like many martial arts.
And while it might not seem that relevant anymore to be preparing soldiers for war,
I think that many of the character-building aspects
that people often associate with martial arts,
come through its practice. The actual doing.
One great way to develop humility is to be exposed to defeat,
and take ownership of it.
One great way to develop resilience is to push through difficult situations.
So back to the Judo story, which now becomes the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu story.
Many years later, a young man named Hélio Gracie—
not so young in this picture but you know what I mean—
would be learning Jigoro Kano’s judo.
He, like his predecessor, was a physically unimposing youth.
And because of that, he developed many techniques
to focus on leverage and timing, rather than strength or speed.
He also incorporated many ground based aspects not before seen in judo.
He and his brothers so changed
the art that eventually became what we today call, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.
So this thing called fighting, is a lot like chess.
It takes strategy and tactics.
But also, both players move at the same time,
and you’ve got different pieces available to each of you.
Or when you’ve got different moves available to each of you,
and the chair might occasionally toss you into there.
But a lot like chess.
I think it’s important to note that
this thing we call fighting is not a fixed compendium of knowledge.
Rather, it’s a constantly evolving problem seeking to be solved.
We’ve been doing it in an organized way since ancient Greece,
and we've been learning all the time.
But never before have we seen the scale of competition that we see today,
where various mixed martial arts organizations
bring together fighters from all around the world
to exchange knowledge and ideas.
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu has seen an increase and spread of competition—
paralleled by clickers that don’t work—
paralleled by an increase in knowledge and teaching.
It’s fair to say that, today, we know more than ever before in history about
what works and what doesn’t work in the fighting arts.
When global communities of practitioners come together to grow
the knowledge base of the art,
there's a development like never before seen in history.
This, for me, is the most fascinating and interesting aspect of martial arts.
To be able to learn from
a centuries-old but also constantly developing and growing body of knowledge.
And also being able to put into practice those things that I’ve learnt.
So, this is an invitation to not forget valuable practices from the past,
but to also embrace the future.
Thank you.
(Applause)