Photo credit: Marital Arts Nomad, Flickr Community Commons.
Jonathan Gottschall was prepping for his task of teaching his students English Literature and glanced out the window. Across the street from his modest college office was a Mixed Martial Arts gym.
“I had this whimsical thought,” Gottschall tells Steve Fast,”Wouldn’t it be funny if I went over there and joined them?”
He did.
Pushing forty and looking for a project (or a distraction from his flagging career), the professor trained in Mixed Martial Arts for two years. The result was a meditation on the violence of men.
“It’s a very enlightening sensation to get punched very hard in the head,” Gottschall says. “You feel in in your brain, not your face so much. The whole point of the punch isn’t to hurt the face. The point of the punch is to hurt the brain.”
Once he got in the sparring ring Gottschall found his perceptions of the men who were hitting him were flipped. The professor said he didn’t find bullies or sadists, but instead fighters on a journey not unlike his own.
“In mixed martial arts the fight is always about you.” Gottschall says. “You’re fighting yourself; you’re fighting your own weakness; your own fear.”
Gottschall’s memoir/mediation on male violence, “The Professor in the Cage,” has raised his profile in academic circles. His status in the cage, however, will not improve. After one fight Gottschall gave up MMA fighting.
“I had to give it up recently just because I was too beaten up,” he says. “When I left the gym for the last time I became very sad. Like I was losing something.”
Listen to the interview: Jonathan Gottschall on The Steve Fast Show
Follow Steve Fast on Twitter @SteveFastShow
