Martial arts, boxing and the Catholic faith seem unlikely bedfellows. Once again British heavyweight Tyson “Gypsy King” Fury has retained his World Boxing Council title in a gruelling 10-round match on December 3: an exercise in punishment. Fury and his Irish wife have six children together; she is a practising Catholic, while his religious beliefs been have described by The Guardian as “a mixture of traditional Roman Catholicism and a literal interpretation of evangelical Christianity.”
Scripture is full of martial language: Jacob wrestles with God, and St Paul speaks of shadowboxing in his letter to the Corinthians. David – later King of Israel – is primarily remembered for subduing Goliath. Cain and Abel clashed in fatal combat. Meanwhile, saints have made references to spiritual warfare down the ages. Fighting pervades the narratives that underpin our faith. Nevertheless, it is usually overlooked or simply deemed immoral. As a martial artist, Catholic convert and former seminarian I’m often asked how faith and fighting can be reconciled. As Scripture shows, they are not incompatible – in fact, they are essentially intertwined.
My own martial arts journey started in St Petersburg. I was 4 years old, standing in a dojo that Time dubbed “Putin’s Billionaire Boys Judo Club”. I never witnessed the President of Russia’s reputed judo skills, but his will to power pervaded the vast gym. After learning the basics I took a 20-year hiatus, embracing the much more brutal sport of ice hockey. On the rink, few rules governed the fights that broke out. When numerous injuries took me off the ice, the “sweet science” of boxing was a natural next step. By the time I walked into the legendary Lambeth boxing club, Fitzroy Lodge, I was a seminarian wearing a clerical collar. “Where have you come from?” asked the head coach, grinning. I was quickly hooked, visiting several times a week.
Back in the parish, the question often arose as to how I could enjoy seemingly brutal sports. However, for me the connection between religion and combat sports went far back. Sitting in my older cousin’s room in the presbytery of my Lutheran uncle, I was mesmerised by videos of the early days of mixed martial arts (MMA). It had only existed in its current form since 1993: “MMA” was coined in 1995 – the year I was born. But here was a sport with roots dating to the dawn of humanity itself. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was founded to pit the various global martial arts against each other for the very first time. I was compelled by the unique character of martial arts, which slip through the cracks of logical precision and poetic imagination because they are neither an exact science nor a conventional art form. Yet they are both a sweet science and a martial art.
Martial arts are raw. The athlete stands centre stage, exposed and alone. He doesn’t have a racket. He doesn’t have a ball. He faces his opponent head-on. Martial arts put an individual character on universal display and, in the modern world, the qualities they expose can prove magnetic. When I was 10, a TV show aired in Sweden called Rallarsving – which roughly translates to “haymaker” or power punch. It chronicled the travels of two Swedish fighters, trying martial arts around the world. From Japanese Judo, through Escrima in the Philippines, to the Viking art of Glima in Iceland: though superficially diverse, all demanded strength, discipline and respect. When home from the seminary one summer I wrote to one of the presenters, Musse Hasselvall, by then a hero of mine. When we met to train and speak, it became clear that I was far from alone in feeling the deep connection between virtue and martial arts.
In one episode of Rallarsving Musse and his co-presenter visited top-ranking, international athletes Bas Rutten and Randy Couture. Bas is a Dutch, multiple world MMA champion, and a practising Catholic. Recently, I spoke to him about the relationship between faith and combat sports. The heavyweight champ sported a brown scapular. Like so many, he grew up in a Catholic family but lapsed later in life; today he says he owes everything to his faith. When we spoke, he had woken early for morning prayer, walked his dog while praying the rosary, and attend-
ed Mass at 8 am, before going to the gym.
For him the relationship between faith and martial arts is founded on duty and love. “As the head of the family, you have to protect yourself,” he says. “If you can’t do it, get a sword! ‘If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’ [Luke 22:36] Why would Christ say that? Because you have to protect your family. If you don’t have martial arts skills, there are always other things you can do. There’s a big relationship, and if you use self-defence for the good, yes, it’s really good!”
There is more to martial arts than self-defence. Speaking about the knights of old, Bas sees true paragons of masculinity. “Those were the toughest men ever. They had their vices under control. Everything was for the family. That’s what a real man should be like.” In the modern world, discipline is seldom prized. Instead, happiness is the instant gratification of desires: drinking to excess, promiscuity and eating unhealthily. Martial artists have long recognised that those are not viable means of happiness. They know what it means to say no to worldly pleasures. Mortification is part of their routine.
The main lesson is the significance of suffering. Preparing for hand-to-hand combat, you can’t eat whatever you like, you can’t go to parties. Every action is reasoned. Through this ascesis, fighters glimpse the meaning of suffering and sacrifice: ultimately, strength and humility. “With training, I just offer it up. I don’t always want to exercise, but I do,” says Bas. In this, martial arts echo faith, honing the lower appetites and training mental strength, ensuring the discipline is in place to refuse the things society tells us we ought to desire. Far from meaningless self-denial, suffering prepares us for a greater purpose and any trial.
This should not surprise us, for body and soul are intimately connected. St Paul writes that the body is a “temple of God” through which we must glorify Him. This, however, opens up an immediate objection. Isn’t it harmful to expose the body to violence through martial arts? I put this to Bas, who distinguishes between violence and combat sports. “Those are the people who don’t understand it. They see it and they see violence. They probably believe gloves are to protect the head. They’re not; they protect the hands. You can’t blame them. They simply don’t know. For us, it is testing skills.” Just as training tempers appetites, so martial arts control and channel impulses that could otherwise surface in violence. To the casual observer, what may look like brutality is one of the most technical sports in the world. Bas adds that “violence is when one side doesn’t consent. In what we do, there is full knowledge”.
While I was still discerning my vocation, I would often go down to the basement of the seminary with fellow students to watch instructional videos and learn how to box, shutting the door on a city pervaded by empty distractions. Whilst a make-shift underground boxing gym might seem a world away from the chapel and library where we spent most of our time, it shared a sense of discipline, order and fraternity, and bore many of their fruits. We aren’t all made for the ring, but we wage spiritual battle every day. Ultimately, like fighters, we face this alone. And it is up to us if we are prepared to take the punches life throws at us.
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