There’s a lot of comments on the internet and people have a lot of opinions. I usually divide them into 3 groups:
Firstly – and luckily the largest group – they are legit and? although I don’t always agree, I respect them.
Secondly – and unfortunately – we also get a lot of “Keyboard Warriors“, who THINK they know a lot about a lot of things, from watching YouTube videos and their mother telling them that they can be anything they want to be.
Thirdly, we have a group of bitter people that write rude things just because their lives suck. They are socially known as “haters” and I honestly feel sorry for them. Their lives are so sad, that they have no other way to express themselves but to write rude things on YouTube and other websites, can you imagine? Those, I just ignore.
Most of the time, I read comments on our YouTube videos and our websites www.StudioMMA.com and www.MMANytt.se – to improve my job and to get an idea of what our fans want more of. I don’t usually respond but I think our fans know that I work for them and want them to enjoy what we do. HOWEVER, there was a video posted recently that I know has also been up on the UG (the Underground Forum). Again, I don’t care what people online think of me as a person; what they think of my fight abilities; or how I should act, walk, talk or dress. Respect and integrity are two very important words to me and as long as my friends and family appreciate the person that I am, I’m content (you can’t please everyone on this planet). Yet, when the video was posted on our Swedish site, there was a word that stuck with me that I couldn’t shake off: Bullying. That I had bullied the person who was in the video.
Never before have I felt the need to explain myself and my actions. In fact, not once in the 3 years the video has been up have I felt the need to justify myself. I’ve read several comments on the video previously and just laughed, because I knew the truth behind story and what had happened. Comments indicating that I don’t know how to fight were even more amusing. My team mates, sparring partners and opponents know my fighting abilities and know that they weren’t displayed in that video. Anyone with a trained eye can see what’s going on in that video and how “serious” I was in my fighting. Yet, if you still don’t believe I can fight, so be it. Life goes on; I have nothing to prove to you.
So why am I writing this? Because I’m not a bully. I’ve dedicated my life through Martial Arts and Krav Maga to train men, women and children NOT to be bullied. I host seminars, lectures and go out to schools to talk about bullying. So for me to come across in any way, form or shape as a bully was unacceptable and I felt I had to justify myself. So after all the above, let me explain exactly what happened that day.
I came into Krav Maga to pick something up (I wasn’t working that day). I had actually been out partying the night before and was on 3 hours of sleep. As I came into the center, our front desk person said “Marcus, I don’t know what to do with this guy – he says he wants to fight one of our instructors, in order to see if we are legit or not. He says he believes he can take our instructors, because he’s been in a lot of street fights and to jail and thinks he can beat any of our instructors.”
I asked the guy if he had signed a guest waiver and if he wanted to fight me. He immediately said yes and maybe not so surprisingly; I don’t look like much of a fighter and he outweighed me with more than a 100 pounds. So, I told him to put on a pair of 16 oz boxing gloves and I did the same. We got him a mouth piece and in a CONTROLLED environment, I gave him a lesson. Bullying? Or giving a bully a run for his money? In my opinion, it was the latter and the reason to why I did it. STILL, I didn’t want to seriously hurt him and therefore the leg kicks and punches and the reason I stopped when he said he was done. If you look closely, I had him in a Thai clinch a few times and could have kneed him in the face but didn’t want to seriously hurt him.
I want to make it very clear that I acted on my own accord and it was my own decision. At no point was I representing any team, group or organization but only myself and what I believed was right.
I also want to point out that the guy was actually a pretty nice guy. Cocky and a bully, yes, but after he learned his “lesson”, he actually calmed down and started working out and lost a good 50-80 pounds.
For you that have no clue what the hell I just spoke about, here’s the video:
