Volume 2, Issue 17 August 3 -August 16, 2000

Ihave a friend who I fear may end up in small-claims court soon. We just recently watched the copy of the movie Fight Club that he rented some four months ago from Blockbuster, for what must be the 35th time.

Granted, that is one hell of a movie, but perhaps the reason it grabs so many people by the gut is because they're pissed about something. But pissed about what?

Maybe it is just as the novel Fight Club suggests: we have all become slaves to our possessions and are lost in a futile attempt to work harder than our neighbor so we can get more shit that they have. Hunter/gatherers with more than enough food, we turn to useless trinkets and yin-yang coffee tables for comfort and identity.

Sure.

In an interview with the author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, posted on www.filmunlimited.co.uk, we learn his inspiration for the novel:

… people who were camping near us wanted to drink and party all night long, and I tried to get them to shut up one night, and they literally beat the crap out of me. I went back to work just so bashed, and horrible looking … I realized that if you looked bad enough, people would not want to know what you did in your spare time. And that was the idea behind Fight Club.

Palahniuk goes on to detail his then new-found obsession with fighting, there was a period where I was in fights pretty regularly. My friends never wanted to go out with me, because I was always looking. So Chuck grabbed a nut and went out street fighting. It must have done something for him; he soon afterwards wrote a cult novel.

I recently visited a local street fighting training program called Fight Klub Underground (FKU), and I was half-hoping I'd show up to work the next day with a black eye, a missing tooth, or a hole in my cheek. While none of these things happened, I was more tired and sore than usual the next day. It was a true work out with a founded camaraderie between students and instructor. If someone hits you, you have to say, thank you.

This fight training takes place three times a week at Body Balance, a training facility on South Broadway, with a very large square room with a taped-off ring for sparring. This studio is owned and operated by Christophe Clarke, a local martial arts instructor.

Stop looking for excuses for yourself and get up. Stand up and be a fucking man, Clarke said. For Fight Klub Underground, his mission is to teach men to kick their own asses. He wants his students to learn to take more pain than the world can dish out. Once his students can conquer their fears, then they can truly achieve their ultimate goals.

Every man has a shadow in him that stops him from reaching his ultimate self, Clarke said. That is the goal, to defeat yourself. Once you do that, you're on your way.

Clarke enlisted the help of Leo Drago, a boxer and kickboxer from Russia, to help him teach students to realize their full potential. The classes consist of stretching, practicing attacks, intensified sparring, and the absorption of the class' credo: There is no man greater than I, and no one that I am greater than.

Then there is the pure enjoyment of watching two opponents beat the piss out of each other. Such was the design of an event put on July 8, by local promoter Jerry Bronze (alias).

Bronze called it the The Glory Hole, an event at a local warehouse that promised live punk rock, booze, strippers, a man in a gorilla suit, and fights. All but the latter were graciously produced. The bands were loud and good, the strippers stripped, and all in attendance were real drunk, but nobody wanted to fight. Almost nobody. There was Crane, a massive man in blue jeans and white-laced boots with wrestling, boxing and bar-fighting experience. Crane wanted to fight.

I hate people. In general, people are disgusting individuals, Crane said. A quick look at Crane confirmed the fact that he knows how to fight. He was scheduled to fight Trip, who had his reasons for not stepping into the ring (a shoddy little stage that I wouldn't have trusted to hold a small child, let alone two brawlers).

That guy's a fuckin' monster dude, there's no way I'd have a chance against that kid … I'll fight someone in my weight class. I won't fight someone out of my weight class, no fuckin' way, Trip said.

Crane works a full-time cubicle job, not unlike Edward Norton's character in Fight Club, but that's probably where the similarity between the two ends. I'm a corporate slut … a violent com-puter geek, Crane said. He insisted, however, that his penchant for fighting was not a release of job-related stress. I grew up listening to punk rock. It's my way of putting my two-cents into the scene.

According to J.R. Spiegel of The Volts, who performed that evening, the last time Bronze put on a similar event, there was a fight between every set. But there were no strippers.

I suggested to Justin Berton, the Westword correspondent there, that he and I glove up and fight, David v. Goliath (strictly on a distribution scale). But I think the strippers diffused all of the testosterone on scene ... none of the scheduled fights went down (although it was still a noteworthy party). I did see somebody get bounced off the hood of a car out front.

As for real underground Fight Clubs, Clarence Thatch, who operates 3-D Martial Arts, said that they are real. Having trained students in Denver for nearly 20 years, he said that they happen here and elsewhere, but he has never been to one.

He said that real Fight Clubs are underground because they are usually mob-run and more for money making than anything else. He declared all of the interest in them lately as a new destructive way to create anarchy, which he does not support. Now I'm not sure whether I should watch Fight Club again, join a street fighting class, get drunk, listen to punk rock, or just roam the streets looking for a fight.