Beyond Discipline: The True Fighter's Mindset That Wins

 

Many people like to pretend that martial arts masters embody discipline, respect, and humility, and that fights are won by being more focused and controlled than your opponent. This is a load of nonsense. Most elite fighters have the personality of a ballistic missile.

They're insane, unrelenting, and focused on the absolute destruction of whatever they're pointed at. This is known as the toxic champion mindset, and it's pervasive throughout almost all of sports. The toxic champion mindset is the idea that toxic personality traits not only accompany high-level athletic success, but are actually the cause of that success.

In this article, we'll talk about what kind of mindset it takes to be a fighter, how this same mindset can end up ruining some people's careers, and why this matters and what we as a community should even do about it. The first thing any prospective fighter needs is to be a little crazy. Fighting is a job with a low probability of earning good money, a high probability of having your career suddenly end due to an injury, and a nearly 100% probability of brain damage.

Anyone that isn't crazy would pick a different career. The second thing they need is aggression and a willingness to hurt people. The guy across from you is a hard worker with loved ones and a dream of providing for his family and making his children proud of their father.

And you have to beat daddy into a bloody pulp. And if you can't do that to someone, you can't fight professionally. If the ref hasn't called it, they're not a person, they're your personal punching bag.

Now, that doesn't mean you have to enjoy that part of the job, it just means you have to be able to turn off your empathy and just see a target, even when they're hurt and bleeding and unable to stop you. The note from my script editor said that's fetishizing violence and is going to make people feel gross and uncomfortable. And yeah, that's kind of the point.

If the thought of that is upsetting, then you're going to have a hard time being a professional fighter. And it can't be something that it's hard for you to force yourself to do. If you have to continually remind yourself that your opponent is a target and you're allowed to hit them, that takes focus away from actually doing the moves and winning the fight.

The good news is this trait can be learned. If you can't bring yourself to hit people, you can be conditioned to do so. Whichever fighter is less hesitant and more willing to inflict damage is going to have an advantage.

The third thing a fighter needs is confidence, and not like a normal amount of confidence, like way more confidence than that. Too much confidence, probably. Watching a world champion beat an experienced fighter into a bloody pulp and thinking, yeah, I could take that guy requires a level of confidence that most people can never dream of.

Not only do you need a ton of confidence to step into the ring with someone, but it's also been pretty well documented that any doubt about any facet of the fight will inevitably be your undoing. He is incredibly dangerous in the striking department, his knees, his elbows. If my striking isn't way better than his, I'm f***ed.

Any wrestler will tell you that a tentatively thrown shot is going to be stuffed. Any hesitantly thrown punch is going to be slipped. If you think they might be able to outwrestle you, you will get outwrestled.

If you think they might have more power than you, you will be outpowered. Fighting at a high level requires you to look at a trained, focused killing machine in the middle of their athletic prime and think to yourself, they don't stand a chance against me. There's confidence, there's overconfidence, and then there's what fighters need to have.

Because the most maddeningly confident fighters typically have better results than the more realistic ones. As if insanity, a willingness to hurt people, and an absurd level of confidence didn't sound awful enough, fighters also need to be very entitled. Fighters have to look at a championship belt, a symbol that recognizes the hardest working and most talented people in the entire world, and think, I deserve that.

That should be mine. It's not enough, Joe Rogan. Give me your pouch.

Believing that you can be the best in the world is all well and good, but believing that you should be the best in the world, that it's an injustice that you don't have that belt already, is a much stronger motivating factor. And the fighters that have this sense of entitlement based motivation are often going to outwork the fighters that don't have it. I know that these traits sound pretty negative, and yeah, they kind of are.

But these are traits that legitimately help people succeed, and we can't look down on fighters for having the kind of mentality that makes them good at their job. Being ready and willing to kill people is also a horrible trait, unless you're a soldier, in which case you're revered as a hero. Fighters with the mentality that I've described are not evil, they're just qualified.

And yes, there are exceptions to this rule, which I'm sure people are furiously typing in the comments. For example, George St. Pierre was pretty much the humble, respectful, and disciplined stereotype of a martial artist. However, most people with that mindset don't win, and most people that win don't have that mindset.

GSP is a weird exception, and he's obviously distinctly different from the vast majority of high-level fighters. Even Wonderboy might not be entitled, but he's still insane, confident, and perfectly willing to hurt people. The only real problem with this fighter mentality is how often it can get people in trouble outside of the ring.

The obvious example for this is, of course, John Jones. He's an ego-driven lunatic that can do drugs, ruin events, beat his girlfriend, run over pregnant ladies, and drive drunk more times than anyone cares to count, and still genuinely believe that he should be forgiven and allowed to fight. However, the personality traits that make him awful also make him one of the best fighters ever.

He's entitled, believes he can get out of any situation, doesn't care who he hurts, and is just generally insane. But if he were actually the humble and respectful person that he pretends to be, he might not be nearly as effective in the cage. Now, the point of this is not to say that you have to be an awful person to be a fighter, or that fighters shouldn't be held responsible for their actions.

The actual takeaway from this is fourfold. Number one, you do not have to be Hollywood's made-up perception of a humble, honorable martial artist to be a good fighter, and that actually becoming a good fighter involves a channeling of aggression and a focusing of specific personality traits. Number two, while we can still hold fighters accountable for their actions, we need to stop pretending to be surprised when they assault corners, buses, old men, and even other fighters.

We need to have policies and procedures in place for when fighters do bad things, and quit clutching our pearls as if such actions are inconceivable. These are young people that get hit in the head for a living, who are systematically rewarded for aggression and violence. If you're disappointed and angry when they do bad things, good.

If you're surprised, maybe you haven't been paying attention. Number three, fighters and future fighters need to be aware that the thought patterns that help them win fights can also ruin their lives. They need coaching and practice in how to keep the toxic champion mindset from ruining their careers.

Number four, I've seen too many schools try and iron out or tame any natural athlete that gets too overconfident or entitled. They're attempting to fix a student that isn't necessarily broken. This bugs me because while they may be kind of annoying, they also often have the greatest potential.

Now, obviously, if you have a student in your gym that's going way overboard and being disrupted, take care of that. But if you have a student that just wants to go and wants to be a fighter, good. That's not a problem.

If they want to be a fighter and they're not pulling at their leash, that's a problem. If you care about performance, you're not training a family pet, you're training an attack dog. Fighters are supposed to be rabid pitbulls pulling at their leash.

A coach's job is to keep hold of that leash. At all times, the fighter's mentality has to be balanced out by the coach's mentality, which is entirely different, equally fascinating.