I stayed up the other night to watch the UFC 103 Main Event between light-heavyweight kingpin Lyoto Machida and his challenger, Muay Thai specialist Mauricio Shogun Rua.
I was buzzing with anticipation. When Machida won the title, he turned the game on its head because in a sport that had come to be dominated by wrestlers and jui-jitsu practitioners, he was a karate man.
Karate was discredited as an effective fighting technique during the early years of the UFC and was quietly discarded by mixed martial artists, but, unexpectedly, here was a man who, in 15 fights, hadn't lost so much as a single round. Fleet of foot and accurate of strike, his opponents could no more impose themselves on him than he could dispose of them. Darting into the pocket, he would unleash a barrage of deadly strikes before slipping elusively out of range. His beleagured opponents couldn't touch him. It was incredible to watch and everything you'd want from your karate master.
Now, as he waited to take on his latest foe, I found my mind drifting back to the period I practiced karate. The day an opportunity arose that was the stuff dreams are made of. The day a master saw my potential and decided I was the one to pass the torch to. To train and to groom. To pass on his wisdom. His knowledge. His skills.
The background to the request was rooted in a hundred-and-one kung-fu movies. Bloodsport, the Karate Kid, No Retreat No Surrender, Kickboxer... I devoured them all.
However, the omnipotent theme was not lost on me. A Master. A Student.
I constantly dreamt of the day a sensei would discover me, take me under his wing, and teach me mystical techniques that had been honed through centuries of combat and meditation. I would soak it up like a sponge.
However, Stav wasn't your average sensei. A big, fat, middle-aged Turkish guy with a glass eye, I wasn't expecting a lot when I walked into his class as an eagar 13yr-old.
Nevertheless, I was itching to display the repertoire of moves I had learnt from the telly and, naturally athletic, I began to tear through his other students. I was fast, flexible and inventive, and I treated the dojo as my own personal kumite. However, the sparring sessions with overmatched peers became little more than a showcase to exhibit my flashy arsenal and I began to feel stymied by the lack of challenge.
But then, a month in, the call came.
At the end of class, Stav pulled me and one other student aside and told us he had seen something in us. He wanted to train us. To develop us. To hone us. One on one.
All my dreams were coming true...
Mark was a tough, little kid from my estate who had recently started turning up to class, and, as we went home together that evening, we were both elated. We knew what it meant. We had seen the films. It had begun.
The first training session was still a number of days away and during that period, we speculated endlessly about the syllabus. When would we be taught to perform gravity-defying spinning kicks? How to fight wearing a blindfold? Or, finally, to be passed that most solemn Holy Grail of Martial Arts. The Dim Mak. The Death Punch.
The first session, when it finally arrived, was a little more low-key than we had perhaps been expecting.
Stav was smoking a fag by the entrance when we got there and, when we went inside to change, we were surprised to find two older students, a guy and a girl, already limbering up. This hadn't been part of The Vision.
The session was also a disappointing series of katas followed by some unlikely stick work with a great big staff. A bit disillusioned, I quietly speculated as to the odds of being attacked whilst carrying a huge staff and was promptly scolded in a low, hissing tone by the older girl who warned me not to let the sensei hear me talking like that. This was shit. They were shit. This wasn't what I'd had in mind at all.
However, I resolved to see the session out and, at the end, the sensei offered to give us all a lift home. With the sun setting in the sky, we all clambered into the back of his car and set off for the first stop. It was the older boy's address. Which, unexpectedly, also happened to be the second stop. The older girl's. Which also happened to be the third stop. The fucking sensei's. All three of them lived together.
We all went in and Mark and I sat quietly as the three of them, a wholly unlikely triumverate, began making themselves at home. After a few minutes, the sensei, sensing our unease, offered to give us both a lift back to the Estate. I jumped at the opportunity, but Mark, cannily, had seen enough and decided he'd walk down the road to visit some non-existent relative.
He was jumping ship. He avoided my eye as he picked up his bag and left, and for good reason, the little cunt.
Still, it was what it was, and as the sensei and I set off in the car, he began talking a load of kung-fu mumbo-jumbo in an effort to re-engage me in the dream.
But I wasn't buying. Stav wasn't a mythical master. He was a fat, middle-aged Turkish man with a glass eye. And two protégés living at his house, in the most unglamorous of circumstances.
Nevertheless, the grinding rhetoric kept coming.
'If I could show you how to be a better martial artist but you would need to train five days a week, would you do it?'
'I suppose so...'
'And if I could show you how to kick harder but you would need to undertake a series of painful exercises, would you do it?'
'Yeah, I guess...'
'And if I asked you to do uncomfortable things to harden your spirit, would you do it?'
'I dunno. Probably not...'
It was about to come to a head. Stav suddenly swung the car into a roadside layby. I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
'Hold on, if I said cutting off your hand would make you a better fighter, would you do it?'
'Absolutely not.'
'Even if I could prove that cutting off your hand would make you a better fighter?'
'No way.'
He looked at me in resigned exasperation. Maybe he did have the best intentions but we had come as far as we were going to. I didn't trust him. He was talking in metaphors. Metaphors that were far too ambiguous for me. I was no longer sure he even knew kung-fu.
I looked out of the window and suddenly realised we had pulled up beside one of my relatives too. Yes, they'd welcome an unexpected visit from their, what, nephew, cousin, whatever...
I got out and walked home.
And that was the end of the karate experiment. I switched to boxing for a short spell, then, the recent dalliance with jui-jitsu aside, knocked the combat sports on their head.
And as for Machida, the amazing UFC karate expert, he got battered silly for five rounds then somehow eked out a hometown decision. Perhaps he would've fared better if he'd lopped off a hand?