On President Trump’s 80th birthday next Sunday, professional fighters will attempt to beat each other up on the South Lawn of the White House in a newly erected arena called the Claw. There’s even been talk that the fighters might emerge from the Oval Office, then do battle in an event featuring a shower of patriotic fireworks.
I teach at a state university in Boise, Idaho, a town that’s a blue dot in a red state, and most of my friends and colleagues, as well as most people on my social media feeds, are already horrified by the prospect of this coming spectacle. I get it. But what many of my friends don’t know is that, for several years now, on Saturday mornings, I say goodbye to my wife and kid, head to Straight Blast Gym, lace up 16-ounce gloves and trade uppercuts and body kicks with a group of highly accomplished fighters. I’m training in muay Thai, one of several fighting styles commonly used in M.M.A.
In my social circles, muay Thai and M.M.A. are often imagined as the sole territory of disgruntled and possibly deranged males in their early 20s and divorced dads who mainline Joe Rogan. Picturing my gym, my friends likely imagine a basement with bare lightbulbs and Tyler Durden intoning, “The first rule of Fight Club is …”
They’re not totally wrong to have that impression. There is an overtly macho element to combat sports: the trash talk and posturing, the slugfests and blood-on-the-mat fights. In my experience, lots of young men are interested in learning how to fight. Maybe these men don’t want to feel vulnerable or weak in a world that feels full of threats. A few of them — though none I’ve ever met — might even aspire to fashion themselves into hyper-alpha males modeled on the likes of Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer, self-avowed misogynist and manosphere influencer who’s been accused of human trafficking.
I do think it’s true that many young men crave a sense of confidence but struggle to find ways of cultivating it. And they may become attracted to messages that explain away their feelings of inadequacy: It’s feminists, it’s liberals, it’s my teachers, it’s my boss. They may even come to idolize the kind of aggression and macho bravado that ultimate fighting offers, and that our president deploys in business, politics, international relations and, yes, the promotion of over-the-top M.M.A. events.
When I first walked into a fight gym, I’d recently moved across the country to a new city, for my wife’s job, and I was feeling a bit unmoored. I confess that I fantasized a little bit about a reborn version of myself — lean and dangerous, somebody not to be messed with. But that’s not quite what I’ve found while training, and it’s not why I’ve stuck with muay Thai. Instead, the sport has helped me in ways I never expected. I’ve learned that legitimate fight gyms offer an alternative vision for what men ought to be.
Like other difficult sports, muay Thai teaches you that purpose and pride can be earned through hard work — and that you are responsible for building your own confidence by pushing your physical and mental limits. Muay Thai training has also given me a sense of poise and tempered confidence I don’t think I could have found anywhere else.
Not long ago, my wife and I had our first child and, in the months after his birth, the stress and sleeplessness started to get to me. There were moments that I felt anger and frustration rising — most often at myself, at how much work having an infant turned out to be, and how unprepared I felt. Each time this happened, I recalled an exercise we do at the gym called a flinch drill: A partner rains down punches on you while you do your utmost to remain calm and watchful behind your guard, parrying and blocking whenever possible. Because of that drill, I’d learned to use breath work and mindfulness to alleviate my stress response. In the most difficult moments of early parenthood, that’s exactly what I did.
People might imagine combat sports as all about anger, brutality and aggression. But being calm under fire — calm always — is one of the first attributes taught in muay Thai. Composure is valued above all else and respect for one’s rivals is close behind. For this reason, accomplished fighters are well prepared to keep their cool.
I don’t tend to bring up fighting at the playground or around the college, partly because I’m wary of being seen in a negative light — as a bit of a brute, even — and partly also because I know such judgment isn’t wholly unjustified. It’s true that certain men let their abilities in the ring go to their head. I admit that on occasion I’ve found myself fantasizing about testing my martial skills (such as they are) outside the gym — teaching a lesson to some guy who dared to say the wrong thing to me or my wife. And there are invariably one or two guys at every gym who are out for blood every time they spar, no matter the skill level of their partner. Muay Thai trainers sometimes refer to this behavior disapprovingly as “ego sparring.”
But fight gyms also have a way of cutting egos down to size. Just when you start thinking a bit too much of yourself, you end up toe-to-toe with a skinny teenager who can easily put you on the ground. There’s always someone around who can outmatch brawn with calm and technical prowess.
There’s a tradition I’ve encountered in my muay Thai training that’s notably different from the bravado that surrounds the U.F.C. and the kind of pomp that will most certainly be in full force at Mr. Trump’s White House fights. Before serious and professional matches, muay Thai fighters do a formal dance around the ring called a wai khru, which involves a meditative swaying and movements meant to evoke and honor tigers and other animals.
The purpose of performing the wai khru, beyond its aesthetic appeal, is to pay respect to teachers and parents, and to remind the fighters and audience that the contest is a form of ritualized violence, a way of expelling aggressive impulses while building, rather than undermining, community feeling. While I’ll occasionally watch an M.M.A. fight, I’ve become a devoted follower of the professional muay Thai circuit, based out of Rajadamnern Stadium in Thailand, and I always enjoy watching the dances that proceed the bouts.
The dance is not necessarily what anyone in the Western world, or the so-called manosphere, would call macho. I doubt the White House M.M.A. fights will involve any such ritual or reverence, or any appeal to the notion of a calm and centered self. So if you’re put off by the prospect of cage fights on the White House lawn, fair enough.
But don’t dismiss the skill and dedication of the fighters themselves. The growing popularity of combat sport gyms is, to my mind, a great thing. My spirits are buoyed every time I show up to Saturday morning practice and find a room full of young men and women who are serious about making something better out of themselves. If there really is a crisis of masculinity, as the headlines would have us believe, muay Thai is part of the solution, not the problem.
Matthew Denton-Edmundson is a professor of creative writing and the author of the forthcoming novel “Reclamation.”
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