End of Vacation; Fighting

Alas, tomorrow the work week begins after two weeks off. I'll miss having so much time with my family.

I will return to training after taking one week off (I did train hard the week of Christmas), though I'm going to stay away from sparring and grappling for a bit more to be sure my rib is healed.

Martial arts blogger John Vesia had an interesting post back in November, which I'm only finding now, about boxers who could have been martial artists. It stimulated an interesting discussion about whether boxing is a martial art (many of his readers didn't think so), and whether fighting arts are martial arts. There's a boxing coach, Christy Halbert, author of The Ultimate Boxer, who makes the interesting argument that a boxing match isn't a fight because the boxers aren't angry at each other; they often have tremendous respect for their opponents in the ring.

An interesting perspective; but not the one in the movie The Fighter, which I watched today. Christian Bale in particular puts in a virtuoso performance as Micky Ward's crack-head brother. There's plenty of anger, and more fighting in the two brothers' family than there is in the ring. The crazy family dynamic, and Micky Ward's (Mark Wahlberg) effort to balance his needs with his need for his crazy family is the center of the movie.

Bale's performance was disturbing to me since it was reminiscent of a person I love who has a similar troubled personality though, thank God, not the addiction the character has. A very powerful movie.