Can you take a hit? One aspect of competitive fighting that you can't learn

When I was a teenager I was kind of obsessed with combat sports. We didn't yet call it Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) because the entire thing was just kind of starting out and UFC was something that very few people knew about and not many people bothered to watch. This rather lawless competition was marketed on the basis of it being a showdown between various disciplines to see which style of fighting was the most effective. We would see Wing-Chun fighters go up against kickboxers and boxers face off against wrestling. It was pretty exciting for those of us that participated in and followed multiple disciplines.

For many of us, it was the first time we had ever heard of jiu-jitsu and while many of us found it boring to watch, there was no denying that it was effective and remains as such to this day.

I ended up getting involved in semi-professional fighting in the late 90's and while preparing for my fights there was one thing I learned in that prep that can't really be taught to a person, no matter how skilled they are: Can you take a heavy hit and remain standing?

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I don't think this quote from Spike Lee was in relation to combat sports, but it is extremely applicable, that is for sure. Looking back on my moderate success in MMA, I can say without question that I wasn't a terribly gifted fighter, but I had one edge that other people couldn't possibly mimic, no matter how much they trained. At that time in my life, it was just almost impossible to knock me out.

I recall many times in my life where I would hit my head as a child at one point falling out of a tree and landing on my head yet not only did I not get hospitalized, I shook it off and kept playing with my friends, often laughing about what just happened. If we had cameras all over the place back in the 80's like we do now, this video would almost certainly be a meme and people would be oooh-ing and ahh-ing about how someone can take that much punishment and keep going.

This essentially became the strongest part of my arsenal as far as fighting was concerned. It wasn't much of a factor in regular training because with the exception of the rather strange martial art Wing-Chun, I had never been involved in anything where they attempt to "train" you to take punches. I don't think it is something that can be trained and you shouldn't really try unless you enjoy having brain damage problems later in life.

I could take a hit, hard hits, and I would end up taking a lot of them during my rather short stint in MMA as a prize-fighter. I ended up retiring with a professional record of 1-2 (only 1, but rather glorious win) but after my 3rd fight, I was so badly concussed that I don't remember the 3rd round of the fight at all and barely remember the 2nd half of the 2nd round. I have no recollection of this, but my corner apparently really wanted to take me out of the fight after 2nd round but I was insistent that we keep going. I was on auto-pilot and don't recall any of that let alone being able to talk and argue convincingly.

But the point is very clear in my mind: If you can take a hit, you can get pretty far even without having a great skillset outside of that. My offense was pretty good, and that was part of what made me seem dangerous to my opponents and to my team, but at the end of the day my real strength was that nothing really seemed to hurt me. Clean shots landed on an unguarded head was something that I just shook off and in one of my fights, my opponent was completely exhausted by the end of the fight not because of taking damage, but by dishing it out. Everyone in attendance was just amazed that I wasn't KO'd because I had taken so much damage but just kept moving forward. I lost that fight by decision but became a bit of a local crowd favorite kind of like Nate Diaz did on a global level because here is this bloody monster, who just keeps coming for you even though you have thrown everything at him that you have and he simply refuses to drop.

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With the correct training, I think I probably could have excelled in this sport but life had other plans and after my 2nd consecutive loss where I racked up thousands of dollars of medical bills on a $100 purse, I decided that this sport wasn't for me. Oh and there was the case that a CAT scan result and a neurologist advised me that I should stop participating in this sport because I could die if I don't.

I think the most exceptional example of a guy that simply couldn't be floored by punches is one of my favorite fighters of all time, Roy "Big Country" Nelson.

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Roy Nelson had the physique of the average guy that drives a truck and heads to the bar every day. If he was lined up with a bunch of other fighters and shown to a group of people that knew nothing about the sport and they were asked "guess which of these people is the fighter?" Nobody would have selected Roy. His attacks were sporadic and seemed completely untrained, his defense was abysmal. But Roy had one things that almost nobody in the history of combat sports had: He simply wouldn't go down.

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Roy had almost no offensive weapons other than this overhand right that he threw with such ferocity that his entire body twisted and his head was no longer even looking at his opponent. If he caught you with it, the fight was over most of the time. It was a wild spectacle but smart fighters quickly learned that this was the only weapon that he had and later on in his career, opponents would simply circle right at all times and nullify his one and only weapon.

Roy doesn't have any silverware in his closet at an elite level, but he does have the record for the most significant strikes absorbed without being knocked out. In a fight vs legend Stipe Miocic, Roy managed to take in 437 significant strikes but still remained upright and while he was staggered a few times, he NEVER went down. This is 437 strikes at HEAVYWEIGHT as well, where just one nicely placed punch can result in nearly anyone going lights out.

Roy would eventually get KO'd by a similar style of rather untalented fighter in Mark Hunt in 2014. Shortly thereafter, Roy kind of faded into obscurity because his one claim to fame was that he couldn't be floored. There was also the rather big problem of him constantly butting heads with the boss, Dana White.

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This is god-like status as far as being able to take a beating and I attempt to make no comparison between myself and Big Country but the overall message is still true in fighting: If you can't take a punch, it doesn't really matter how well you can throw them out.

Sure, you might be also able to fall out of a tree on your head and walk it off, but the tree isn't chasing you and trying to kick you in the head.