Cage match: Prof’s venture into MMA not quite a knockout

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This article was published 02/05/2015 (3991 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Frustrated at his dead-end job as an adjunct professor of literature at a small university in Pennsylvania, Jonathan Gottschall decided to join a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym to test himself and write a book about his experiences. The Professor in the Cage follows his two-year training regimen and thought processes up to his ultimate battle with a serious opponent in an inescapable metal structure.

While MMA is only 20 years old, this kind of book is not a new idea. Two similar books have already been published (pre-MMA), and two Hollywood movies released.

Sportswriter Paul Gallico initiated the practice of “participatory journalism” (a hapless amateur writing about a sport from the inside) in the 1920s. Gallico stepped into the ring to face heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey — and got knocked out in mere seconds.

George Plimpton, editor of the highbrow Paris Review, made a career out of this sort of reportage. He played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and wrote about it (Paper Lion), pitched in the major leagues (Out of My League), played goalie (Open Net), and challenged champions in golf, tennis and chess.

But MMA is not tennis or chess — it’s a no-holds-barred sport. As Gottschall explains, “the whole point is to violently incapacitate the other guy before he violently incapacitates you.”

While knees to the head are allowed, as are kicking and elbowing, new rules ban biting, eye-gouging, head-butting, kidney-punches — but little else. It’s a bloody and dangerous sport — bones get broken, brains get concussed, blood gets spilled. If you’re lucky, you get out of the cage merely humiliated.

There’s actually not all that much to the story. How could there be? The training is monotonously repetitious, and the opening sentence verifies Gottschall did not suffer permanent brain damage from the bout. He can actually remember things and (engagingly) writes in complete, understandable sentences.

Violence is not new to him. He has published several previous academic books on the subject: The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative; The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence and the World of Homer; and The Storytelling Animal.

What sets this book apart are the insider’s perspective, the cagey structure (if you will) and the well-researched interstitial material.

Gottschall starts out on some personal incidents, digresses into background information and then comes back to round out his stories. We get interesting mini-treatises on duelling, bullying, pugilism, presidential debates (Romney vs. Obama), academic in-fighting, the male love-hate relationship with war, ant tournaments, bull-baiting and sexual selection.

The best interrupted story involves a fight with his friend, a mild-mannered chemistry professor, at a faculty cocktail party.

The Professor in the Cage is an old-fashioned book. Disappointingly, there’s nothing on neuroscience or evolutionary psychology and what they can tell us about violence, and very little on women. It’s about guys and guy-ness.

The author’s conclusions aren’t particularly new or revealing. The two big questions in the subtitle of the book are answered quite simply: Men fight to be brave, to prove themselves, for honour’s sake — to be men.

Our human battles are not much different from the “monkey dances” of other primates. We like to watch these fights because heroes need audiences and audiences need heroes. We can learn from watching.

What did he learn about himself and why does he continue as an MMA fighter? The experiences, he says, “steepened his life.”

Gottschall is not as charming and amusing as the patrician George Plimpton, and he’s not as great a literary stylist as Paul Gallico.

He has come up with a great title, but written a book with mixed results.

 

A retired movie prof, Gene Walz has survived a one-punch knockout and more than his fair share of screen violence.