Happy Thanksgiving UnderGround

On the first Thanksgiving, 392 years ago, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag celebrated with days of wrestling contests, and dined on venison, popcorn, and wild turkey (the bird not the bourbon). The historical record shows that the original colonists included William and Mary Brewster, and their sons Love and Wrestling. So giving thanks on this day, on this fight forume, is truley only juste and goode.

How cool a fighter’s name is Wrestling Brewster?

To the international members of the UG, Thanksgiving is a day in which Americans travel far to spend time with family, eat a lot of foods they don’t usually, and offer thanks. To the Japanese members (heh) of the UG, it is sort of like Kanamara Matsuri, but the thanks don’t have to be for gigantic metal ummm members. To the Thai members of the UG, it is like Monkey Buffet Festival, but instead of feeding monkeys, we act like monkeys and feed us. To the Spaniards, it is like La Tomatina, except we eat about 150,000 vegetables, mostly cranberries, instead of throwing them at each other.

And to the Americans, it is an honor to first give thanks to all the men and women in uniform serving our country, and those of our allies, so far from home in theaters of war. You are heroes to this sports’ heroes, and to the rest of us.

Thanks to Uncle Creepy for finding a stricken Shane del Rosario, doing CPR, and giving him a chance. Please keep Shane in your prayers and thoughts.

Great thanks and respect to Justin Wren, who has journeyed to the Congo to free 1,000 MButi slaves, and currently suffers there from Thypoid and Malaria. A man of towering faith, he thanks God for the experience.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to everyone who comes here. Thanks to the fighters and the fans, to the gym rats and the champs, to the company owners and the customers. Thank to all, from the 01ers to the FOOBS; and extra thanks to the 13ers who remember that second grade lesson about why have two ears and only one mouth, or whatever the digital equivalent would be.

Thanks to the lurkers and to the trolls who I really wish would just lurk, but in the end you have to do your own thing, and that’s you. Thanks to the blues and to the muds and to the rouges and the greens. Without you, this place would be what my HS wrestling coach said was the most worthless word in the world – potential.

A special shout out to those of you cutting for a fight, for who the feast is a piece of skinless turkey and a fixed number of green beans, no butter. I hope everybody wins, I really do.

Today, more than any day of the year, America travels to sit down and eat with friends and family, with the people we love. So, since this is a fighting forum, you might ask what does fighting have to do with friendship and love?

Everything.

As captured in names of the brothers at the first Thanksgiving, love and wrestling have everything to do with each other.

In Sam Sheridan’s great book “A Fighter’s Heart” he explains, relating pioneering academic research on aggression by Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz.

“(Lorenz) talks about geese and says that two furiously aggressive animals must bond and live together in a small space, all without weakening intra-species aggression. They have evolved inhibitors, behavior-changing devices, that turns the aggression they normally feel toward others of their species into something else when they mate.

“The same thing, although in a more complex way takes place among men and women of the same tribe or family, bound together for increased success against the outside world. Lorenz writes that friendship is found only in animals with “highly developed intra-species aggression,” and goes on to say that the more aggressive the animal, the deeper the friendship.

“The ability to love and form bonds has evolved as a way to temper aggression, to turn it into something more powerful when defending hearth and home. Friendship and love are essentially evolutionary by-products of aggression. Men and women who form these deep bonds – who evolved ways to mitigate interspecies aggression – have great success in passing along their genes.”

It is all about love.

Dana White famously explained to the Oxford Debating Society (and everyone else) that fighting is in our DNA. But it is more than that. Fighting, along with fear, and procreation, are not just in there somewere, they are the core of who and what we human beings are. Love and friendship developed to make that aggression, that fighting, work for us. Without fighting in our DNA, humankind would not have developed the capacity for deep friendship, and above all, for love.

So Happy Thanksgiving, to each of you.

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Image courtesy of

Kerri Matuszak @preemiememe

I’m a digital artist.and a mother of triplets, all disabled, all amazing!! Also I’m a Real Howard Stern Fan!

Long Guyland · freakingnews.com