As we traverse the incredibly difficult journey known as life there are lessons along the way that are invaluable as well as experiences that provide patterns of thought and behavior that affect our entire lives. As a matter of the fact, one of the things that we learn very early on is that there are a lot of thankless tasks and thankless jobs that are simply necessities. Many of us are probably engaged at this very moment in a job or a career that have a lot of aspects to it that are of the utmost importance yet we will never receive recognition for. There is an entire career made up of just such tasks: enter the combat sports referee.

The referee is the ultimate thankless job if you will. Referees are never recognized for good calls or a good performance, are told to stay out of the way, and are only talked about when they make what is to be perceived as a bad call or mistake. These people truly do their job for the love of their sport whether that be boxing, mixed martial arts, Muay Thai, or any other combat sport for that matter. These are the gentlemen who show up early, leave late, and know the intricacies and nuances of each and every rule.

In the video below we see one such referee. He is officiating a boxing match, and although it doesn’t necessarily seem so, he is willingly putting himself in harm’s way all for the love of the sport and to ensure that the match is contested fairly. There is something to be said for someone with that kind of passion and unfortunately, as we see below, his passion may have him second guessing his career choice.

“>

Jacob C. Stevens is a lifelong athlete and cerebral martial arts enthusiast who is also skilled in the art of linguistic manipulation, his published work, Afterthoughts and Handgrenades, can be found here…