Some people say they don’t like fighting, just as some people say they don’t like watches. But if you persuaded the most hardcore horology-denier to spend some time getting to know one or two of the lovely watches on the pages of this magazine, you can guarantee that sooner or later he would start to have warm feelings for them. Equally, if you think that you have no interest in combat sports, I challenge you to watch a few UFC fights. You may discover that you love it, or at the very least you will find it grimly fascinating. Because there is a bit of warrior in all of us.
Many of us like to think that we have evolved past our primitive instincts, but underneath the layers of morals and manners, we are still apes. And apes love a good scrap. But just because the instincts are primitive, it doesn’t mean that the fighting has to be. The martial arts have been evolving for thousands of years, and in the past quarter of a century there has been a revolution.
Fist Of Fury
Back in the 1980s, the whole world of martial arts was shrouded in mystique, and there were endless, unwinnable arguments about which style was best. Then everything changed. In 1993 there was a tournament in Denver, Colorado, in which men from different martial arts backgrounds were locked inside a cage and told to fight until one of them was no longer willing or able to continue. The advertisement promised that there would be no weight classes, no time limits and, most importantly, no rules.