Tim Kennedy’s ability to cope with contrasts keeps him sane
Sports Illustrated’s Melissa Segura recently wrote a truly compelling profile of Tim Kennedy, main event winner at last night’s Fight…
Sports Illustrated’s Melissa Segura recently wrote a truly compelling profile of Tim Kennedy, main event winner at last night’s Fight for the Troops 3. Segura reminds how different actual war is from sports, and that for example we let the 2013 Boston Red Sox refer to their facial hair as “war beards,” and that Kennedy is emotionally quite sound, after two tours that left so many suffering from PTSD. Kennedy’s ability to cope with and embrace contrasts is what keeps him sane.
Eventually, Tim Kennedy felt no remorse when he killed men. It became a black-and-white proposition to him. The guys who threw acid in the faces of Afghani girls trying to go to school? “I killed those guys,” he says, “and I slept really well that night.” One of the four aces in the U.S. Military’s deck of Iraqi’s Most Wanted cards, the ace who burned Americans and beheaded them on TV? “We killed,” Kennedy says, “I don’t even know how many bad dudes to include — super, super bad dudes — and we come back, and we’re like high-fiving.”
But the first time he killed someone, Tim Kennedy fell into the gray. Kennedy watched the man bleed from the less-than-perfect grouping of bullets perforating his forehead. The man didn’t have a gun — at least not yet. That’s what he was reaching for, right? He didn’t stand up screaming in the name of Allah like some of the other Muslim extremists Kennedy’s team encountered, but he wouldn’t kneel down at the Kennedy’s command, either. So Kennedy blasted him.
The feeling that filled him next was the principal ingredient in an emotional cocktail that has sent more than 250,000 combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan home with symptoms of Post-Tramautic Stress Disorded: Doubt. He felt it overtake him, bubbling up inside until he felt another unexpected sensation, this time a hard slap across the back of his head.
“You popped your cherry, Rook,” said Kennedy’s team leader, as he lowered the assaulting hand. “You owe me a case of beer.”