SLE Sports

I'm a pretty nice girl in real life. My principal hobbies are spending time with my family and my border collie. I love to cook, read, surf, dance, and shop. I'm not intimidating at all- my nickname is "Smurf." I'm 5 feet tall, weigh about 95-100 pounds in real life, and my avatar looks pretty much like I do (size wise, anyhow).

The one fight in my adult life- a case of mistaken identity where a girl thought that I was the slut who was flirting with her boyfriend when, in fact, it was some other slut- consisted of with me being slapped, staggering backwards, falling over a table at the Ranch House in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and presenting a visual to my friends of "I just saw one of your legs with the ankle resting on the table." To my credit, I got up and tackeld the girl, managing to even pin her on her back... but right when I was about to flail away on her, my husband literally picked me up and carried me out of the bar, kicking and screaming. I've come to realize that he was right to step in when he did this, but that girl did indeed deserve what I was going to give to her.

Since then, it's been pretty much Soccer Mom City. I live a nice, calm, peaceful life with no violence. I don't even spank my kids. Of course, the human species isn't designed for peace. We're one of the few species capable of envisioning, creating, gripping, and using Weaponry. We have numerous physiological and psychological systems that exist primarily for Flight or Fight. Our history is full of heroes that were good at nothing at all but killing. The $1, $5, $10, $20, and $50 bills in the USA all have military figures on them. Clint Eastwood has multiple Oscars.

The whole Nice vs. Mean dichotomy provides tension for most people. Very few individuals can use Violence to get through their day. While I would have greatly enjoyed slapping a few of my students when I was a schoolteacher, doing so would have lead to my termination and incarceration. The guy at the farm stand would most likely not agree to give me my asparagus for free if I could drop him like a Ho if we fought, and the police will agree with him. So, most of us repress our atavistic impulse towards violence... until some straw comes along and finally breaks the camel's back. A lot of school-shootings and wife-murders stem from this kind of thing... once you throw away civilization's influence and step up to the bar for a nice can of kickass, you may as well close the joint out.

You'll never see Me drowning my border collie, though.... because my job sometimes steers me towards places like the MMA Fight Club in Palm Beach. Now, I can step into the octagon and bring the ruckus. The complex worries of the world fade away, replaced by the more black and white worries of Kill Or Be Killed. It's pretty much what Darwin had in mind. One develops a certain appreciation for the mundane after 3 minutes of fighting for your life with some giant, born killer. Everything else- even the bad stuff- can be judged better after you hone your senses to 3 minutes of fury in a 4 foot radius around you.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that I walked into a MMA club and just started whipping candy ass. I was polite and nervous. The staff there was a big help, and I was fortunate enough to be there as a personal guest of club owner Big Tom Stratten. BTS lives up to his name, as he pretty much dwarfs me when I stand near him. He has also put together a helluva good operation, and I plan to tell you all about it. I spent no small amount of time being amazed at how nice people who fight for fun are.

Once you find the place (I can do a COPY SLURL, but I think it would be more valuable to my readers to learn how to type "MMA Fight Club" into that little search bar at the bottom of the browser), come in and look around a bit. Make sure you don't wander into the ring while someone is fighting, like I did. Get yourself a HUD (they're costly, but I think I also got a high-end model... never let it be said that Stacey Cardalines brings a knife to a gun fight), put it on, and step into.... well, maybe you should train first.

Footwork plays a major role in MMA (as well as in boxing, which we'll be bringing to you in a future column), to the point where you will literally be beaten senseless unless you come to terms with it. I watched a girl who may have weighed 120 pounds batter a grown man, simply because she could snake in behind him and land repeated, blind-side haymakers and kicks to his dome-piece. Like most everything else in life, MMA seems to be a matter of positioning yourself to strike, waiting for that proper moment, and then unleashing a torrent of devastation upon your hopefully hapless/helpless opponent. Footwork gets you there, and you have to practice it.

This was also the first sport I ran into where the amount of effort required actually made me think of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I was happy when each round ended, because I needed to let my hands hang down to the floor to get the blood flow equalized after. I was also the only one complaining about such a matter there, so I'll accept the hypothesis that the pretty little French writer just might not be Tough yet. I was fighting in a dress until Big Tom sprang for some non-foolish-looking gear.

As for my fighting.. I went right to the top. I sparred three times. Once was against Big Tom, who I saw step on a scale and register 6'6", 340 pounds. He was taking it easy on me, and he still hit me so hard at one point that my avatar lifted 25 feet into the air and landed on the ground outside the ring/octagon thingy. Next was the heavyweight champ, a guy named Pez "The Dispenser" String. He also gave me a Rhianna-style beating. I finished up my first day of training by fighting Cat Denimore. Cat operates "Cat's Den," a combination MMA arena/combat theme park where it really, really pays to know how to fight well. She whipped me like a lazy serf at the Harvest.

Now... we all take our lumps in life. I've already shown you a few of my scars. Tough guys have them, too. George Washington's first battle ended with him running for his life. Al Capone got his Scarface nickname after losing a fight (to a man he later hired as a bodyguard) in a particularly bloody manner. Stacey Cardalines will be back... and she'll be looking to even the score.