WE ARE ALL IN SAME FIGHT CLUB

It was one of the unforgettable quote of Fight Club that shook the world at the dawn of the 2000s, exactly 1 year before the millennium;

”Hit me as hard as you can"

In another unforgettable frame of this film, which took   picture of the consumer society while the Internet possibilities had not yet increased so much

The quote was  “The things you have will eventually own you”, the film describes the world that has been transformed  insanely  since the industrial revolution.

Fight Club, remembered  on the minds with the unforgettable performance of Edward Norton and Brad  Pitt, engraves its allegory  with the following sentence beyond all its narratives :

“You are not special, you are not beautiful, you are not the only snowflake in the world, you are just a rotting organic matter programmed to disappear like all the others.”

Naturally, this cult movie came to my mind when I met the World Cage Fighting Champion Murat Kazgan for a random reason.

I have never thought about this sport-like event where two people fight in front of other people with bare hands, unprotected and without rules, until now for sure.

In fact, a person who took up fighting as a profession was no different from an alien to me.  Because  I pretend  playing the role of “deaf” (as former Turkish president Ismet Inönü sometimes did)  to that driver who honked at me in Istanbul traffic .

Especially   to  become a party to a fight that has no rules and could theoretically kill the other person was a mind-blowing activity for me.

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that  you get confused when you see such a person in front of you as a flesh-and-blood  Allah creation. Especially when you imagine a family man as a husband of a wife and father of a todller girl, this confusion becomes even deeper.

It is actually a mystery when human   learned to show violence to someone. A stone age person who is hungry must have probably discovered that mistreating the other person to get the food from  his hands was a solution.

After that, events    developed rapidly. According to a study, the number of people who died in the 12 bloodiest wars in the world throughout history ranges from 5 million to 70 million.

Of course, as combat techniques improve, it is natural that the death toll will increase.

However, if we leave aside the wars, cage fighting is actually a kind of Gladiatorial Combat.

We also remember it from the story of Ben-Hur.

The slave gladiator Ben-Hur's struggle against Roman oppression also showed us unfortunate people who kill each other for the pleasure of others.

Actually, I found a very sporty Z/Y mix individual in the Cage Fighter Champion sitting opposite to me, rather than a gladiator brought to life by Kirk Douglas.

There are a maximum of 3/5 fights a year. The information he gives about the weight is also interesting. You enter the weigh-in 1 day before the match. For this, he loses weight, then you need to increase the weight again until the match. So, it is necessary to lose 10 kilograms in 2 days and get it again.

And the reason for fighting without protection is to increase the fun of the job. When there is protection, you are an amateur, when you are unprotected, you are a professional.

I just got enlightened right here.

Let alone the competitive capitalism where everyone wants to outsmart each other unprotected, isn't there an unprotected fight focused on finishing rival  in sports that don't involve fighting at all like this?

Doesn't the concept of capitalism involve cutting down a tree that one can't sit in the shade of ? Doesn’t it  show us that the rules are insignificiant  details that noone cares   for the sake   of professionalism?

We see Ronaldo and Messi on one side of professional football. What about   millions of people  dreaming of becoming stars who are left behind in the background of this great race ?

In a system where success rewards only  the top of the pyramid , aren't there millions who can't afford to go beyond the struggle for survival?  The reason is not because someone else physically beat them  , but because they failed.

A person may not have the heart to watch cage fighting. It may seem disgusting for one person to beat another brutally and furiously  for joy of people who are willing to pay for it.

However, perhaps this trans-realistic sportive activity that has emerged in the last 25 years is the activity of modernity that makes its work in the most honest way.

What about the  modern life individuals who make each other cute gestures with fake face masks and dig  each others’  graves in the background ? They are indeed in a cage. Is it possible to think what  they do is not a fight, just because they do not break the other's head bones with their bare hands ?

Despite a cage fighter who makes this job 3 times a year for 5 minutes of 5 rounds  as a part of his life, there are millions who wake up for it every day.

Maybe we all beat  everyone that we can overcome spiritually. We are more anxious to overcome our rival  more than a cage fighter in a fight that is ultimately for material gains.

We are part of the capitalist world.

It is obvious what we have done to the climate, the environment and the flora and fauna of the world.

Again, as it was said from Fight Club, “Commercials own us with Cars and Dresses. We are wasting our lives with jobs we hate in pursuit of things we don't need”

Looking from outside the cage and making a life without fighting may be the biggest lesson cage fighting will teach us.