THE GREATEST THING YOU COULD EVER DO – WHICH MOST MEN WILL NEVER DO

How’s that heading sit with you?

Bet it’s got you thinking all sorts of stuff. Bet you think it has something to do with climbing mountains, getting married, having kids, saving lives, or some such shit, right?

In fact, you’ve probably heard other men state the greatest thing they have ever done is precisely one of the things I’ve stated above.

Let me just piss on all of that.

Climbing a mountain? Everest, I presume? Well, it is the highest mountain, right? You summit Everest and it’s a great achievement. You have tested yourself and you have won. So it is a great thing. But it is not the greatest thing you, as a man, could do.

Getting married and having kids? As much of a challenge as that can be, and as rewarding as it is, it’s just the prime directive. You’re hardwired to procreate. So that ain’t it.

Saving a life? Yes, a great, great thing. Totally. No argument. You prevent a death or bring someone back from death, well, that is right up there in the pantheon of greatest things you can do.

But it still ain’t the greatest.

None of the abovementioned will make you thrum and tremble (literally) at a frequency that will juice your brain, or flood it and drown it with every insane “Fuck, yeah!” chemical your body can produce.

Yes, feats like the above will squirt nice Christian amounts of feel-goodness into your cortex, but these amounts won’t even come close to the hell-geyser you can expect when you’re doing the greatest thing you will or can ever do. Think syringe versus firehose.

This thing and only this thing can do that.

It is how men were made. It is why men were made.

That is why it rewards men with such insane and irreplaceable feelings of…well, rightness. That is what male affirmation must truly feel like for it to be true affirmation. And validation. Total validation.

Some build up, huh?

And for most of you, once I tell you what this thing is, you’re gonna say: “Fuck off! That ain’t it!” And most of you will say that and believe it, because you ain’t ever done it.

But those very few who have? They will nod their heads and say: “Fuck, yes! The fucker is dead right.”

So what is it?

It is the physical conquest of another man. It is when you engage another man in hand-to-hand combat and triumph. It is a fight you win. It is when you stand over your defeated enemy, panting, sweating, bleeding, and trembling, and you have bested him. You have conquered.

But it is more than that. You have risked your own life in the process. You have stepped over that line. You have put your hands up. You have taken and given blows, you have rolled in the dirt or on the pavement, and gouged and kicked and bitten and struck and grunted your way to victory. You can get up and he can’t. Or won’t.

You have won. You are the victor. Your enemy is vanquished. You have prevailed.

There is nothing like that feeling. It is the nil plus ultra.

If you think this is untrue, then you have never done it. You cannot know what it is like. Therefore, you cannot state I am wrong. You cannot have an opinion on this that matters at all. How could you?

That’s OK. While all men are wired like this, most of them will never fight with another man. Our modern civilised society works endlessly to ensure we do not come to blows. Of course, we still do, and mainly when we’re drunk – and then we risk getting charged with crimes.

Nearly all fights occur directly as a result of the protagonists being drunk. This is because alcohol lowers inhibitions, and what you might have shrugged off when you were sober, six beers in your inhibitions are switched off, and you’re not shrugging anything off.&&&

Pretty much the only people who fight when they are sober are professional fighters. And we do so love to watch these events, do we not? They are, of course, strictly controlled and monitored. There is a referee. There are rules. It is a sport, after all. And they draw vast audiences. Because we just love watching two men contend in physical combat.

You may have noticed a big rise in bare-knuckle fighting of late. No gloves, shorter rounds, and usually more bloody for obvious reasons. Bare-knuckle fighting is a fast-growing sport precisely because it is touch closer to an actual fight thatnboxing or MMA. If someone came up with a variant that included grappling and punching with no gloves, we would be even closer to the real thing.

Of course, someone has. YouTube hosts a channel called King of the Streets. If you’ve never seen a real fight, and you can stand the insensate violence, you might check it out. No gloves, no time limit, and almost no rules. You can eye-gouge, but you can’t kick in the testicles. You can stomp on your opponent’s head, but he can tap out or the referee can stop it if a fighter can no longer defend himself.

So, it’s close as damnit to the real thing. But it still isn’t the real thing. In the real thing, there is no referee. In the real thing you can’t tap out. You can, of course, run away, which is the same thing. But you may not be able to run away. It’s real, it’s vicious, and the consequences are extreme. People can and do die in fights.

Oddly, when they do, it’s not because one fighter wanted to kill the other fighter. It is usually an accident. The man falls the wrong way and hits his head. The other guy still gets charged with manslaughter, because that is how our social contract with the government works. It has the monopoly on violence and guards it relentlessly.

So the vast majority of men will never fight. And thus they will never know how it feels to defeat another man in combat. They will be denied the greatest buzz they could ever have. They will never know themselves – not truly. They will never be complete.

If and when you put your hands up to another man, you are setting yourself both physical and mental tests. The very hardest ones there are. You will, in all likelihood, get hurt while you test yourself. That’s how this shit works. That is all part of the test. You are having a fight. Not beating a defenceless opponent.

Interestingly, there is no driving need to kill your opponent. You don’t want him dead. You just want to defeat him. Humans are not good with killing each other. This is why there is invariably a deal of posturing before you actually come to blows.

Both parties are hoping to bluff and bluster their way out of an actual physical exchange. Our ape-brains clearly understand what happens if the posturing doesn’t cause one of you to back down. And on many occasions, the posturing is enough.

But when it isn’t, and when the hard rain starts to fall, then you want it over with as quickly as possible. And fights don’t usually last very long. A minute is a long time in a street fight. Three minutes, the length of a professional boxing match, is an eternity at 2am in a pub car-park.

There is little craft or science or even ability in those car-parks. It’s just two men going at it. And all the things they might have learned in Tae Kwon Do class, all the Karate katas they may have rehearsed, and all the Jui Jitsu moves they have practiced endlessly, well, that all goes out the door the second a solid punch lands.

Mike Tyson understood this perfectly well.

In 1987, during the leadup to a fight against Tyrell Biggs, Tyson was asked by a reporter if he was worried about Tyrell’s fight plan. His response has become legend.

It was originally reported as:

“Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.”

It has been misquoted a million times. Sometimes it’s quoted as “getting hit in the mouth”. Sometimes it’s quoted as being “punched in the face.” It doesn’t matter. It’s the sentiment that counts here.

He wants to beat the shit out of you. You want to beat the shit our him.

It is primal, vicious, and all-encompassing. Every fibre of your being is now committed to battle. The outcome is unclear, and it’s mostly chaotic and messy. Your terrified and supremely confident at the same time. Your hard-wired fight or flight response has chosen “fight”. You register blows, but unless they are incapacitating, your adrenalin keeps you going. You’re going to feel every one of those blows later, believe me. But at the time, you’re good to go.

So that’s what you do. You go. Until either you or he can go no more.

And if it’s you standing at the end of it all, and if you can’t hear sirens, or his mates aren’t getting iron bars out of their cars and you have to get out of Dodge immediately, then you will experience the greatest rush you will ever know.

The feeling is indescribable. There is nothing else like it. You have triumphed. In physical combat. At enormous risk to your own life. You bet the pot. And you bet on yourself. And you won.

Your nose is bleeding, your teeth are loose, your lips are mashed, your hands bleed and ache and you can’t make the fists you were making seconds ago, and everything hurts, like, a lot. And it will hurt a lot more when you try and get out of bed the next day.

But you are truly in a state of intense euphoria. If this is your first fight, it is a feeling unlike anything you have experienced. If you’ve done this before, it will be just as intense as the first time you did it.

This is a primal thing. It is primitive and bestial, and completely anti-thetical to our universally-accepted behavioural standards. It is profoundly anti-social. And illegal. And heavily punished by the law. Fighting is bad. Hurting someone, even if they wish to hurt you, is simply unacceptable.

Yes, it is ALL that.

But it is also very much the greatest thing you can or will ever do.