For those of you that have ever had experience in martial arts competitions; this includes boxing, mixed martial arts, Brazilian jiu jitsu, judo, etc. (yes, these are referred to as competitions where matches are held, these are not the same as street fights but alas, that is a discussion for another day) or been involved in a street fight then you know the importance of staying calm during a heated altercation.

A long standing tenet of the martial arts is that excited energy is wasted energy. To come into a match or a fight with anger, aggression, or any other emotion that clouds your judgement and causes less than clear thinking can be dangerous and lead to disastrous results.

Below we see the repercussions of just such actions as it is very clear that our combatant in the black tank top is very excited and emotional about the sequence of events that are about to occur. Unfortunately, I’m sure that he saw this situation playing out in an entirely different manner in his head.

We witness the extremely excited man receive quite the beat down which includes getting kneed to Bolivia only to get up, a bit unsure of his surroundings, and be encouraged by his peers to engage in round two. As the old saying goes, history tends to repeat itself and unfortunately for our overly excited fellow, round two ends as decisively as round one ended.

The lesson to be learned here is twofold: calm, clear thinking is the way to victory in any violent altercation and if things don’t end up the way you thought they would the first time; it is probably best to regroup and try again later.

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…