Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Could be, but some "tradtional" martial artists were literal artists, such as in the Sword and The Brush philosophy, and the warrior/poet traditions, where the refinement of the warrior included the refinement of the man, not to mention the rise of the Budo philosophy (self-cultivation) in early 20th century Japan. If it was a mis-translation it fit with many Japanese ideas about what we call martial arts.

Sylvie has long talked about forming a single thing with her opponent, Spinoza - my favorite philosopher - would advocate for that.

The Psychology of the Space I've had some people tell me that they don't quite understand what I mean by "fight space" or the gap. If you position the two fighters it's simply the space that falls between them. In a sculpture it could be called the negative space, the space where no material is, the hollow space between them. But, visually what it is and its psychological import comes out of how the brain represents the body to itself, in a kind of virtual space. It's what allows us to complete physical tasks without looking, or be able to feel the end of a point of a pencil, as if it is an extension of your fingers. It's our mapping of space, and ourselves in it. In the sci-fi movie Dune there is a great little fight scene which depicts elements of this physio-psychological space, as in this sci-fi world there are protective force fields in hand to hand combat. These force field zones invoke our own zone of protective sensitivity, the dangers we feel instinctively when too close. Interestingly, in the scene, the way the shield is defeated is by moving the blade slowly. This can be related to the use of tempo in fighting, and in really high level fighting the delay, moving off-beat, which is something I'd love to explore a little in a future post. This matches up with the metrical meanings of how caesura is used in poetry, coincidentally enough, the way caesura, or gaps work against anticipated rhythm: watch it here Here there are two envelopes, the proximities that surround a single body. The gap or fight space is composed, in a way, in the area where these envelopes overlap. The movie scene maybe allows us to think about our heightened sense of space, around our selves, and how when moving through the gap it isn't just bodies clashing, but it is also the virtual efference copy of our motor actions, and a kind of halo body of that sensitive space that surrounds us, as both social and predatory beings in the world.

IFMA is quite different than Thailand's Muay Thai, so much so that Thai athletes were regularly befuddled by the scoring. I guess the way to say it is IFMA is kind of a compromise between Thailand's Muay Thai and International Kickboxing aesthetics, designed to invite International participation and ultimately success. Even wearing headgear changes the fight space, but the differences are numerous. It would be almost impossible to export Thailand's Muay Thai to the rest of the world and have it be comprehensible. I think IFMA did a pretty good job translating it all so it can graft onto western participation, but its a very different thing, imo.

It's not so much TKD, but in that book tracing the history of Karate itself, and how far it came from it's actual martial roots. It passed through a bottleneck in which almost all of its fighting context was removed, compressed into kata and Budo practices. It became quite rarified. And then modern Karate all descended from that bottleneck. I have some problems with this Ur-sourcing, this abstraction in its DNA. Then, it developed along various lines, each of them incorporating varying aspects of fighting, but each of those aspects also quite codified and restricted. For me this heritage of development means that there is a highly mediated relationship to the full contact fighting space that arts like Thailand's Muay Thai or western boxing were shaped by much more directly, as they developed through 10,000s and 10,000s of iterations of fighting in a very challenged fighting space. Altering the fighting space, the fear zone, providing safe passage or landing spots, really changes the metaphysical quality of what it means to relate to and stay in that space. This is just my opinion of course, but I find these difference qualitative.

It think for me almost all rule-cushions that cordon off the space and give "safe zones" all work to reduce what I am now calling the "heroic value" of fighting, which is to say, the metaphysical component of working on the substance of fear. All these fighting practices, as they have moved away from fear-fabric, certainly are admirable, but they lack the great substance which I feel has given fighting its value in culture throughout the ages. That isn't to say that they lack value, but they lack that particular value, at least by degree. I have the same feeling with IFMA Muay Thai, or Kickboxing (with its rule cushions). In a sense it's a little like watching a high-wire act, and a low-wire act, for me. Or, that the degree-of-difficulty, the degree of calm, required and performed is just at a different threshold. I know this will sound like I'm putting certain fight forms down, but I choose not really to look at and criticize those things I find to be lessor, rather than, it's more that I'm trying to celebrate the thing, the quality, I find greater. Part of the reason I am enamored with the notion of the fear-gap is that I think it can tap into so much of how we experience ourselves in the world, both physically and emotionally. So trials by fear-gap, for instance in full contact fighting, make very interesting acme case-studies.

wow, interesting. Do you have any kind of links to where I can look through that word? I did a quick Google and wasn't sure if I was finding the right stuff. I'd love to follow that path a bit.

I don't follow Karate, but I assume you cannot punch the head with the fists. This is huge change in spatial and fear dynamics. If you can't strike me in the head with your hand (or even elbows) as I move through the fighting space, this is a vast difference in how I will move through that zone.

It's definitely an artform, as are all fighting sports. The problem with Karate (at least point fighting Karate) is that without blows to the head you are changing the intensity of the gap, the fear-space. Part of what elevates fighting is that fighting triggers some of our most primal, defensive reactions and instincts. Protecting the head when moving through the space, the centering of the perceptive self in the head is a large part of what gives charge to the negative space. When this charge is lowered, or alleviated in someway, the heroic quality, the poetic value falls, just as a mater of course. Of course there are things that happen in that space which are full of fear. You can still be hurt, and still be humiliated. But, with the head off limits it is just a very different thing, making it hard to compare to fighting sports/arts where the head is at risk.

So, in a sense you are presenting the alter of the motherly, nurturing essence of women (feminism)? But in a more complete picture of, yes, violence. But also in the martial sense of a respectful, bound practice. Does that get close to the kind of message of women fighting in a gallery might have?

Yes, these are not "opposites" in Thailand's culture, I think I've come to understand, therefore in fight culture here as well. Westerners are somewhat obsessed with the "real" fight, and paint Thailand sometimes, maybe Phuket fights in particular, as potentially dubious and fake. You have the "tuk-tuk driver fights" and always the fear that if you come here, especially short term you will be caught in a fake fight. Westerners long for the "real" fight. It's part of the fantasy (ironically enough). But, as I said, these are not opposites to Thais. Instead fake (performed, staged, theatricized) and real exist in a kind of continuum. The presence of one does not cancel out or negate the other. A single fight can have both, performed elements and what others might call "real" elements. Is the Ram Muay real? Or is it fake? Well, its performed. Is a fighter's nobility after being hit real? or fake? I think this comes down to that performed elements, for instance public face, are very real things in the culture. Appearances have a weight to them. They aren't just thin veils to be torn down, revealing what is real underneath. People, families, communities work hard to create appearances. Fighters work hard to create them. How could this all be "fake"? It's no more fake than a painting is fake. (sorry to go off on this, but I find this cultural difference, and the mis-understanding from westerners really interesting)

I also have to say, this is incredible. I love, love, love that the performed nature of fights is inviting into an artistic space. I think this is something that Thailand already appreciates at a certain level, that the difference between the "real" and the "artifice" is not a logical dividing line. I also have to say that bringing fighting to art falls in with the things that I was trying to talk about in my metaphysics of Muay Thai. The idea that what fighters are doing is close to what artists are doing.

I'm really interested in this. As a photographer, in Thailand, it always feels like there is a ethical veil I have to pass through when framing a shot. Most of this feels like it has been conferred upon me, a sum total of all the ways Thais have been captured in photography already, all those motivations. With a camera you are holding a device of control. And everything that comes out of the device enters into the pre-existing narrative stream. Is there any way you can open up what those preconceived ideas are in your mind, and how you feel this can be confronted with real, live-staged, but still performed fights?

Yes, I didn't mean to suggest, or maybe emphasize how Vipassana and your yoga instructor are giving different lessons. I may have accidentally done that. I think it's what you say, that all of these endeavors are about "staying in" as a mode of growing awareness, and betterment. First there is just plain old forcing yourself to stay in it, whatever it is. But the gradual challenge is learning to relax in the very thing that is triggering all your alarm bells --- "Get out!" That the really interesting thing about talking about certain kinds of fighting as possibly very high artforms. You have aspects of traditional martial arts which strike one as kinds of meditations, or disciplines modeled on fighting. In many of them there is no fighting, or they did not develop in the modern era through fights. So, you have a kind of poetry of fighting in some of these arts. Others of them did develop through sport fighting, but often under odd-rules, maybe distortive rules (like point fighting, etc). Then, on the other hand, as you suggest there are things like meditative practices, or something of a more meditative physical discipline like yoga. These are reaching for states, qualities of mind (and body), but we do not thing of them as arts. There is no performance, no presentation, so in a strange way they are unshared, at least in the artistic sense. You would not watch yogi confront the emptiness of the world, just sitting there. I mean, one might, but that isn't really the path. Then on the other hand you have combat sports, which largely are seen as just two people trying to hurt each other, end each other, if you talk lowest common denominator, supposedly quite far from these otherwordly, or transformative practices. But what is most interesting to me is that the fighting arts, at least in those that have evolved over decades and decades of countless real fights (boxing and Muay Thai come to mind as maybe the best examples of grassroots development), you have an art which speaks to all the things the Shotokan Karate Master is invoking in his transmission of katas, or the 17th century swordsman displayed in duel, or a yogi on the mountain seeks, or how yoga teachers guide students forward. And this is achieved, or really manifested in the fighting space, and how the fighter relates to that empty zone which is full of fear. And what is amazing is that this battle with the empty zone, the trained, rhythmed, improvised, prodded, wading glide in, is put on display. What others in other practices are doing internally, is made real (visible), so that it can be shared, and spread, with minds taking it in at whatever level they wish. I think all these practices, and maybe really so many more, are of a single thing. What is notable about the fighter is that they are working in "fear". That is the canvas they are working on. And it's sitting right there in front of them, for all of us to see. And...very few people look at it (the caesura), intentionally. There's a beautiful short story written by Kafka called A Hunger Artist, a many in a traveling show who sits in a cage and basically just starves himself to death...well, not death, but for Kafka, into invisibility and disappearance. It's been many years since I read this, but it invokes Kafka's immense self-hate, and symbolizes all the ways that he deprives himself, isolates himself, so much so that it becomes a kind of artform. He definitely is also calling to mind the ascetic, who rarifies himself into an almost spiritual state. Kafka is really talking about himself as a writer. There is just a tremendous end to this story ---- and if anyone is going to read it, it's linked above, spoiler below ---- He suffers kind of culmination of his invisibility, his growing thinness, he expires in his feebleness...because he is forgotten, he lost the attention of audience, if I recall. And then with a suddenness a panther is placed in this same cage. This just struck me like a hammer when I first read it so many years ago: " “All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And they buried the hunger artist along with the straw. But in his cage they put a young panther. Even for a person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing to see this wild animal throwing itself around in this cage, which had been dreary for such a long time. It lacked nothing. Without thinking about it for any length of time, the guards brought the animal food. It enjoyed the taste and never seemed to miss its freedom. This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it. That seem to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its joy in living came with such strong passion from its throat that it was not easy for spectators to keep watching. But they controlled themselves, kept pressing around the cage, and had no desire to move on. " This is what is so beautiful about the fighter, and the fighter's art. In relating to the void, the caesura between them and their fear, in going through endless training of absolute rigor, and being broken again and again, in doing all the things that I've described above in the first post, they are somewhat like the Hunger Artist. They are painfully submitting to the fear, and becoming relaxed in it. But, transformatively, they are also doing this as the Panther. They are, potentially and apogetically both the yogi (transcending common fear, bounded fear) and the panther, fully embracing their animality and vitality, as someone connected powerfully to the earth and the full stream of being that they are a part of. It is the starved and the feasting, together.

And in the Eastern Tradition we have the unity of the artist and the warrior in the concept of Budo, and the related pair of the Sword and the Brush. The metaphysical claim that the brush is the sword of the mind. Here is Musashi's (d. 1645) calligraphy of "Fighting Spirit" along with a short poem "Cold currents envelop the moon/Clear as a mirror" Critical observation on the calligraphic style of the great Japanese swordsman (author of the Book of Five Rings), "Several things strike you about this calligraphy, especially when you try to duplicate it with a brush. The two characters are written in virtually one continuous stroke, and yet the strength of the line is continuous and rhythmical. This is only possible by the concentration of deep engagement and continuous exhalation. The strokes are bold and continuous, but a balance of thick and thin strokes reveals an exceptional sense of rhythm and agility, a mind that can find it’s way in and out of trouble. The strokes are tightly laced, giving you a feeling for what Musashi calls nebari, a pasty persistence that sticks to the core and does not let go." - source Here as well, it is about how one passes through the fighting space, or in this case, how the brush passes through the empty white, which for Holderlin is the poet's horror.

The Natural Bridge Between the Poet and the Fighter It should be noted, while it may seem extreme to try and bridge German Philosophy, and arguments about the highest art, with real fights happening in real rings, in commerce-fraught promotions broadcast to passionate fans, but the poetic and the warrior have long been meshed. The Homeric song that sung the war, Greek Tragedians contemplating the fate and character of warrior/heroes, even Pindar (who Holderlin and much of his generation studied) glorifying winners in the original Olympiads, the first western "sports stars". There is a great arc between the rare world of the poet who seeks to immortalize the hero, the warrior, and the warrior who wishes to be sung about. And this arc, I believe, is outlining some of the more profound projects of human endeavor. There is a thread that is sewn across these centuries, and these seemingly divergent realities. It's what fighting means. What I am suggesting is that in attentiveness to the fighting space, the gap, as a plasticity, we gain access to the very register of the aesthetic/spiritual endeavor. Examples from Antiquity Satyrus, boxer from the 4th century BC boxing of antiquity Pindar, who some see as the greatest poet ever, celebrating the most famous boxer of his day, Diagoras, a huge fighter noted for his non-evasive fighting, and erect style: "...But do thou, O Father Zeus, who holds sway on the mountain ridges of Atabyrios, glorify the accustomed Olympian winner’s hymn, and the man who hath done valiantly with his fists: give him honor at the hands of citizens and of strangers; for he walks on the straight way that abhors arrogance..."

Becoming the Center of All Relations - The Metaphysical Project The poetics Benjamin was investigating proposes that the poet (and for us, the fighter who does his art in a much more concrete, and perhaps universal fashion), in submitting to his fear, courageously, unifies seemingly oppositions. As such Benjamin suggests that he becomes "the center of all relations". He lives in the caesura, which signifies the gap between the human and the divine, the disjunction which characterizes human existence. This is really the apogee of the argument for the possible elevation of the fighting form, and perhaps Muay Thai in particular, as THE artform. For some aid in fleshing out this position here are fragments from a secondary source essay summarizing Benjamin's position: And then: Ultimately, questions like these bend to questions to the value of the Heroic. I think we can imagine that the value of fighting and the fighting arts, other than just utility value, lies within their heroic qualities, or project, and in that heroic project, as many traditional martial arts assert, a self-cultivation. Watching fights, appreciating great fighters connects up to these much higher aiming values. We don't realize it when watching fights - and one of the most beautiful things about the fighting arts/sports is how they transcend class, the art speaks to all socioeconomic classes, something few do - but unconsciously we are swept up into something that potentially has a very high, really metaphysical aim. To come heroically in touch with the untouchable. The fear gap, the caesura. Benjamin's Center of All Relations, the Autarchy of the Relation, is really the acme of where this argument leads us.

It kind of amazes me that I wasn't heading in this direction, but ended up there with the example of Pi Nu's training of Muay Thai. There is very little "correction". A touch, just to tap you toward where you should be, but a lot of it is just stretching you. His padwork is legendary. He mostly just finds your limit - where you are generally, but also that day - and pushes it. He's looking for equanimity in the face of failure. It's almost as if its the only thing he is looking for. Standing in the fire. This doesn't produce a good or great fighter in a short period of time, but I can see how it connects up with this larger picture of relating to the pain, the fear, the gap. It's a kind of gap training. In other gyms, perhaps in the west, you might be beat on until you "toughen up", but this is a different sort of thing it feels like. It's almost just teaching you to be a salamander who chooses to stand in the fire, because the fire is its element. Not in a tough sort of way, but in an aesthetic, almost spiritual sort of way. What is compelling is that in Muay Thai (and other forms of fighting, but perhaps uniquely in Muay Thai due to it's history and cultural core) we have an artform that expresses this very human, metaphysical venture, in terms of tempo, rhythm, space and violence. The relationship to the gap is right there in front of us to be witnessed and experienced, and even relived (in video). It is an artform, perhaps of the highest form because it enacts and aestheticizes this primordial metaphysics.

Here, to give a worthy example of differences in capacity to relate to the gap between fighters, Glory 59 Robin van Roosmalen vs Petchpanomrung. Just watch this fight looking at the gap, the space between fighters, and how each fighter deals with, relates to the space. You can see the "hold your breath and go" tactics of Roosmalen. To be fair to him, this is just the kind of fighting that Glory type rules encourage. With the absence of any kind of grappling there is no penalty for just rushing through the space with a combo. Nonetheless, Petchpanomrung is just living in a different vocabulary and awareness of the gap between them. This comes from the core of Muay Thai, and he can use that spatial knowledge despite primary weapons removed by the rules. One might say, but Roosmalen is a stalking fighter, he's just pressing the space. Having watched the above fight (conditioned by the rules of Glory, and the nature of contemporary kickboxing) now watch the Ray Robinson vs Rocky Graziano World Middle Weight boxing championship. I know it's a different sport, but just watch this fight (below) only looking at the gap. And don't watch Robinson (who is an absolute artist and who some consider the greatest ever), watch Graziano, a stalking power-punching fighter. Watch his relationship to the gap. And compare it to the rudimentary fighting of Roosmalen. I'm speaking only of the relationship to the fighting space, using this as a (possible) fundamental vector of fight comparison. We have in these two fights two illuminating illustrations. In the first you can compare two fighters to each other, the way they both navigate the shared fight space. And, between the two fights you can compare how two stalking power fighters (Roosmalen vs Graziano) each relate to the fighting space. Yes, they are very different sports...but I'm proposing a metaphysical judgement, something that crosses eras and rule sets. It's still an aesthetic judgement, but a judgement along a particular, argued-for criteria. Even if trying to be fair to Roosmalen, for the limits of his vocabulary and tactics, at the very least we could argue that kickboxing rules if nothing else produce this kind of fighting, this kind of relationship to the gap. Prospectively: If my metaphysics are right, or at least productive, we should have a register by which to measure the value of differing combat sports and fighting arts, and also to compare and weigh eras, and fighters to each other.

This is the extended passage from Sylvie's post on her sak yant, to which I referred above and was remembering. She says it better than I ever could. It influenced me in these thoughts on the gap. Re-reading it now it is interesting that she directly compares it to the kind of training Kru Nu does in terms of Muay Thai, the kind of stretching of a person required: I was given the option to stop by Arjan when the tigers were complete, but I didn’t want to stop. So we kept going. And there’s something in the process of knowing that you just have to endure, that you can’t stop it, that is a very keen lesson for life, for Muay Thai, for existence in general. It’s hard because part of what makes pain tolerable is the knowledge that it will stop. A “this too shall pass,” kind of thing. But you’re sitting there with this pain that makes the whole body quake involuntarily and it’s not passing; there’s no end. So I breathe and try to just be in the moment, but the moment is filled with pain and so it’s becoming this eternity of pain and I can’t think or distract my mind until it ends, because I don’t know when it will end. I just have to breathe and accept it. My pain tolerance is considered high – but this was different, even compared to the Sangwan I received across my chest. Near the end, Arjan just kept adding and adding to the middle – the most painful parts. He was putting in the spells – that part is the magic, a syllable here, two syllables there. He would stop for a moment, wipe down the whole piece and there would be this fleeting feeling a kind of tender care of the damp cloth cleaning off the sting. I’d look into the reflection of the doors and see him pick up the marker; and he’d pick up the needle again… all I could do was shake my head and accept. I could not make it stop. It stops only when it’s finished. I did cry, involuntarily. Only near the end, only for a few minutes, and Arjan “tsk-ed” me, quietly chiding me for losing control and would ask gently but firmly, “Sin-wee-uh, wai mai?” (“Can you endure?”) And I’d calm myself, breathe and carry on. I know that for sak yant in general you cannot, or simply do not, stop even if someone is breaking down. The Arjan gives you the chance to recollect yourself but they don’t stop to do it. What’s amazing about Arjan Pi – and I’ve never been tattooed by another Arjan, so I don’t know if this is unique to him or not – is that he actually seems to go a bit harder when you betray your struggle. It’s like, “if you want to let your mind break down then it will be worse; get your shit together, that’s how you make it easier.” He doesn’t say that, of course, but that’s the way the pain teaches you… or directs you. My trainer at Petchrungruang, Pi Nu, does something similar. He’ll put more pressure on you when you start to struggle, to see where your breaking point is. He’s stretching limits – or giving you the opportunity to do so, really – and if you figure out how to relax and just keep answering then he’s happy and you’ve grown. If you break, if you give up, he’ll take into account whether it’s a bad day for you or whether your limits are just too rigid, if they’re “set,” so to speak. Pi Nu guides young boys to become Lumpinee fighters and champions this same tacit, “find the solution within yourself,” manner that Arjan Pi practices with the tattooing of yant. And that’s what’s so transformative about this experience. Have you heard folks talk about using psychedelics as a “shortcut,” to glimpse the shores and open the mind to islands of consciousness it may not have known, but then you have to do the hard work through meditation and living to get back to those shores for real… to actually touch them? That’s what being tattooed by Ajarn Pi is like. He’s a teacher and a guide. Pain is this river and it’s moving and you can kind of work around within its limits but you just have to let it carry you to wherever it’s going. This last experience was the most intense ever. I realized, very early on in the process, that most of the physical pain we experience in life is incredibly short – it’s very intense but temporally very short – a burn, banging your toe on a table, a cut, a fall, even a broken bone will fade into an ache after a pretty short time. Most of us are lucky to not live with chronic pain. So to sit here, voluntarily, and endure nearly 4 hours of constant pain is something unlike anything else. You have to sit in it; you have to realize you’ve chosen this." from Transformation and Belief: Receiving my Sak Yant Sua Ku and Takroh

We use Vegas Pro 16 which is pretty comprehensive. They have non-pro versions which are just fine too. For me the workflow was pretty easy to learn. You just drag clips into a timeline and do stuff to them, then render it all. Aside from a big Windows purchase I strongly, strongly recommend Kinemaster for the mobile phone << that's the android link, there is an iOS version as well. Hands down this is the best designed app of any sort I've ever encountered. Sylvie learned how to use it in 5 minutes, and it's so intuitive that she now edits short videos on it for sheer enjoyment. I think there is a free version of it, not sure. But...it would be a great training ground for any desktop version of an editing software, or at least for Vegas 16. It's the same basic interface.

I feel you! I have to write this way, otherwise I just would never write. Every thought stream would require a book. I do apologize though, it is in a way inconsiderate to the reader. It's my vast compromise, just so I can get the sketch out, in a way to propel another thought, or give a wispy gust of wind to another person's mental sail, if I can put it like that! Something to move everything along. I totally thank you for that effort! That's a very interesting analogy! Some of my understanding on this comes from Sylvie's experiences in Vipassana Meditation, her first dive into it is here. What differed in the Vipassana approach was that tranquility or calmness of mind was not the goal of the practice. It was simply building the skills to perceive how everything the body does is a move away from suffering or discomfort. And this awareness seems to lead to a certain understanding that there is no end to suffering, or discomfort. Pleasures, like the one you describe as a contrast, are kinds of distractions from a fundamental "existence is suffering" realization. Sylvie in a similar vein described a realization she had when her arjan was really pounding the sak yant needle into her skin on one of the most painful stretches. She was really mentally breaking. She realized that if she just kept waiting for the needle to stop, she would break. She had to get to the place where she just accepted: This will never end. She is convinced that this was the arjan's lesson. He purposively was pushing her. So, my theories about the caesura, the fear gap, and the art of fighting being the relationship to that gap, that mental suffering, are really informed by Sylvie's report on Vipassana, and from her sak yant trail, the value of staying IN something, and not trying to get out. This is maybe a little different than the yoga teacher's lesson, but perhaps related. This is the beautiful thing about the art of fighting to me, and in this essay maybe what I hoped to reach for. German philosophers and poets may very well have wrestled with these concepts, but fighters live them. Even the beginner in a Muay Thai class, sparring for the first time, grasping for the tools that are supposed to save him or her, feeling the fear, is living them. Performing them. It's beautiful to see how mundane (earthbound) and how heavenly the ambition is. Yes! Endure and manage the uncertainty, so well honed and said.

What specific physical actions in Muay Thai (or boxing) do you feel inflame or aggravate the injury?

The stronger the army! The team I'm looking to build is specifically people in Thailand. There are things I really want to do here, in this space. Maybe 4 people strong. But the more ancillary support the better to be sure.

Corollary 1: This argument also provides a framework for understanding why any striking art (entertainment form, sport) that does not include grappling is at deficit. The reason for this is that if there is no grappling amid striking it encourages hold-your-breath-ism, which means when faced with the gap, the fear, you can just grit your teeth and throw your combo. Get to the other side of the gap and be "safe". You see this all the time in various kickboxing timeouts and ref breaks. The relationship to the gap is just two people holding their breath and jumping over it, to "safe" (the cessation of fear). This is related to aggressive attacks that Jack Slack humorously has called "Karate, karate, karate!". I'm over-simplifying it, and this certainly isn't the intention of for instance kickboxing rules that are imagined to unleash "pure action", but it is what evolves when proximity has no consequence and produces a "timeout". It could be argued that one of the hidden reasons why MMA has thrived in terms of entertainment is that it produces a richer sense of distance and danger. MMA fighters have an inordinate fear of the gap, by and large, but some of this is because they can't just jump through the space and call a time out on the other side. By privileging grappling MMA gives the fighter no safe space, they are forced to more or less continually deal with fear (at least when standing up). Striking arts that remove all or most of grappling are seriously compromising the very logic of the caesura. There is no safe space. Boxing makes an interesting example in this, in that because it's a highly developed artform evolved through decades and decades of full contact fighting, and the spatial skill levels are as high as those shown in the classic Muay Thai of Thailand, it rivals Muay Thai in terms of the metaphysics of the caesura, the work in fear. True, there is no explicit grappling in western boxing, but infighting, clinch and dirty boxing up close are art-forms within the ruleset. And, all the proximate spaces are fraught with difficulty. You cannot box effectively by just holding your breath and throwing combinations, and waiting for the clinch break. I also suspect that the reason why so many top level Muay Thai fighters transitioned to western boxing and had great success there wasn't so much because of their "hands" (individual skills), but because of their fundamental spatial awareness, the priority of the relationship to the fear gap. Not needing to grab the side of the pool, the ability to tread water and engage for extended periods in space.