Combat Sports and Revolution: A Report Back from Fight Weekend in North Carolina

A report from North Carolina on a recent gathering benefiting anarchist political prisoner Michael Kimble featuring combat sports.

Through the weekend of October 18th-20th, the triangle-area of North Carolina hosted a series of events to bring combat sports and revolutionary politics together. This weekend was put together by a handful of comrades and friends who have been training, fighting, and coaching together, some of us for more than a decade.

Our intention with this weekend was to nurture the culture of martial arts and combat sports training in North America, which is generally far, far behind European and Latin American anarchists’ building of this tradition. Over the years we’ve been inspired by anarchist smokers in Philly, Oakland, Montreal, and Mexico City, etc. The disparate nature of radical martial artists organizing in the margins of our cities often leaves us feeling disconnected. In an effort to feel less alone in our commitment to training combat sports, Fight Weekend was a long-overdue celebration of how far we’ve come and what is possible.

Among often unfriendly political communities increasing in convoluted social allegiances and intellectual abstractions, we want to be in our bodies first and foremost. We believe that physically training together among our varying experiences and capacities offers us something that other, often culturally and racially segregated silos of dance parties, punk shows, or activist events do not. This is not just for the relevance of the skills themselves, but the opportunities for trust-building under stress, and vulnerability through play. We have experienced firsthand how this kind of togetherness is a hugely gratifying and applicable practice, helping to shake off some of the “beautiful loser” mentality that troubles our communities as we fight against the daily horrors this world offers us.

THE WEEKEND

The weekend began on Friday with a Welcome Cookout as people trickled in to town. A huge amount of food was brought, largely thanks to the support of local folks helping to run a nearby mutual aid disaster warehouse, who were pulling double duty between running a supply warehouse for western NC hurricane relief and helping with the weekend of events. A big projector screen was set up and played fight footage of various rad fighters, as well as a sweet tribute video to a local anarchist pro-MMA fighter who recently retired. We gave out programs with the weekend schedule, and had a small letter-writing station where participants could sign a group card to Alabama prison rebel Michael Kimble, for whom the fight night itself was a fundraiser.

We also had impromptu “face-offs” between people who were scheduled to fight each other the following night. These were beautiful and hilarious, as people from different towns walked around the cookout finding their opponents. Following the suggestion of a Philly comrade, next time we want to hype the spectacle of these face-offs even more. A comradely and over-the-top, campy spectacle!

The next day was kicked off with a group self-defense workshop at a nearby gym led by local pro-fighter D’juan Owens. After a series of individual drills we practiced as a large crowd intervening in various situations where an attacker was grabbing or holding/choking one of our own. Highly relevant!

A few hours later, our Fight Night fundraiser kicked off at Raleigh United Mutual Aid Hub in downtown Raleigh. Adorned with banners and lights, about 20′ by 20′ of mat space, and a big table of zines and t-shirts that Michael Kimble helped design, around 140-150 people filled the space through the night. There were twelve matches – six jiu jitsu, four muay-thai, and two boxing – and they were amazing! The crowd was screaming, bodies were falling all over, people went fucking HARD.

When matching people for their fights, we asked fighters to respond with their stats: age, general walking weight, and experience level. We also asked their thoughts on potential opponents based on their gendered experiences and on gender affirming hormone therapy. We received a range of responses, allowing every fighter to self-determine what was and wasn’t important to them to help make a fight they felt comfortable taking. This was as important to us as was letting the fighters know they are welcome however and whoever they are. We take huge pride in how a lot of the matches that night were an absolute gender-fuck-you to the entirely ridiculous combat sports industry.

Halfway through we had an intermission and played a 9 minute interview with Michael to give a background on his case and his organizing behind bars. He also managed to call one of us immediately beforehand, so in addition to playing his recorded interview, we were able to have some loud group chants into the phone for his benefit. It is an ongoing and sometimes difficult task to bring our revolutionary ancestors, elders, and prisoners into the political spaces we create, but Michael felt present, and his words set a really beautiful tone for the rest of the night.

After the fights officially finished with a final bout of beautifully technical muay-thai violence, people shared hugs and dancing before we took a big group pic for Michael. The crowd started to dissipate, some to an after-party, others to help break down the space. We ended up raising over 3k for his post-release fund!

The weekend officially finished with an open mat and group conversation at a local gym the following morning. People who had been frantically trying to punch and choke each other in front of a rowdy crowd the night before got to hang more casually, doing padwork or having light sparring or grappling rounds, asking each other technical questions, problem-solving certain positions, or just stretching and decompressing from the night before.

We closed out open mat with an hour-long facilitated group conversation spanning different themes related to how training has affected people’s political practice and the movements and projects we are a part of. This was the only formally planned conversational space of the weekend, and it was intentionally limited to those who actively train in combat sports.

The range of insights and “Holy shit, yes, that is what I’ve been trying to find the words for!,” moments during that convo are too numerous to mention. But of note, people discussed how our training has been crucial to work through trauma endured in street fights with fascists and cops, how it has worked to build trust in the decision-making instincts of our affinity groups, how it grounds our perspective on what kinds of interpersonal conflict are “worth it” vs. what kinds can be set aside, how martial arts can be a vehicle for inviting in new people that would normally be alienated or turned off by activist subcultural bullshit, and how coaching has in turn made us better at teaching other kinds of skills and ideas. It was a beautiful privilege to have a weekend where we could approach some of these questions with others who share the passion for and experiences of fighting.

IN CLOSING

First and foremost, we owe a huge thanks to the many people (Em, you were incredible!) who stepped into last minute roles for this weekend, to help with everything from housing to sound, tabling, door, reffing, and MCing at Fight Night. Impromptu ring babes pulled it all together with fiery, sexy outfits and hand-made round cards. And obviously, huge shout out to everyone who traveled to town to take part and compete. Extra appreciation for all the people who helped out even as they were responding to the disaster in western NC.

As enthusiasm continues to grow for combat sports in radical political communities, there will be ample models to choose from on how to move forward and organize these spaces. At our fight night, there were fighters who train strictly at autonomous, “political” gyms, others like us who coach and train at primarily normal “apolitical” gyms, and others who are able to combine the two. The shared wisdom seems to be that there are pros and cons to both, with the former being more affordable and offering a higher degree of political and social intimacy, and the latter more consistency and a higher level of instruction. Regardless, we encourage people to test themselves. If you can, compete at least once or twice in order to be honest with yourself. Don’t wait until a street fight with fascists goes awry to learn that you have absolutely no idea how to escape a basic RNC.

For our part, we tried to adopt certain lessons we’ve learned from attending and fighting at sanctioned fight events over the the last ten years, in terms of matchmaking and how to smoothly run an event, while dispensing with other aspects that clashed with our values or seemed a bad fit for a revolutionary (and non-sanctioned) card.

Ultimately, this was really an open experiment for us, and we think it worked amazingly well. If you’re interested in putting on something similar but have questions, hit us up at [email protected]!

No pasarán,
fight weekend crew