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Language: en
You talked about moral victory. Can you
explain how your morality contributes to
the way you see the value of winning?
Sure. Uh I I think there's absolutely
such a thing as a moral victory. And
sometimes people that uh are trying to
manipulate you or trying to get you to
buy something will tell you differently.
And you know there is there it goes in
two directions. For instance, let's say
you're a blue belt and you compete
against you know a real black belt. And
there's plenty of people running around
black belts that are not particularly at
this point. But you know let's say for
instance you're a blue belt and you
compete against a real black belt. the
likelihood of you winning is almost
zero. However, if you go out there and
you try hard and you do your best and
again, whether you come off the mat, you
know, a winner, which would be very
fortunate and unlikely, but or you come
off the mat, you know, on the other side
of things, if you went after it and you
tried and you, you know, let's say you
had some nerves, but you kept that in
check and you fought hard and you didn't
let it get the better of you, um, you
know, that would be, in my opinion, a
moral victory and and there would be
nothing wrong for recognizing it as
such. Now, that's not the same thing as
an actual physical victory, but there's
nothing wrong with saying, let's say
you're your opponent's 260 lbs and
you're 120 and you tie, they get the
decision. Hey, you know, I mean,
remember that happened to me at the uh
quarterfinal or not the quarterfinal
rather in the third round at the
absolute in the worlds in uh 2008. Um,
you know, and you know, it was against a
a heavyweight or super heavyweight and
ended up 000 and I wasn't happy about
losing by any stretch of the
imagination, but looking back, I'm like,
"Oh, okay. Well, you know, generally
speaking, if you end up level
considering that I have all of the
resources and you don't, that is, you
know, you definitely performed a little
bit better than I did. Now, at the end
of the day, you know, wins and losses do
matter and you do want to try to make
sure that I'm not shooting for the moral
victory. I'm shooting for the actual
victory. But every now and then it's
very very important to keep in mind that
you know am I just asking myself am I
conducting myself in a way that I
respect that hopefully other people of
value or respect and also a way that I
believe is going to produce actual
victory and actual positive results in
the long run as well. Uh I think it's
important to recognize that because
sometimes you'll see people get very
frustrated. Let's say for instance if I
box against people that are much more
experienced than me all the time. you
know, I'm not going to win. And anyone
that tells you differently has is either
not training with people that are very
good or B, they have no idea what
they're talking about. But what I can
say is, hey, did I do a little bit
better today? And better doesn't mean
that I did I land more punches
necessary. Was I more under control? Was
I more able to kind of keep my keep my
focus and and execute what I wanted to
execute? And if the answer to that is
yes, you know, I'm moving in the right
direction. So, as far as I'm concerned,
there's all sorts of different types of
moral victory, but it would be the the
same thing as, you know, let's say, for
instance, you know, Fedor slaps your
mother. You got to hit him. You have to.
He's going to kick the out of you
almost certainly, but you have to hit
him. It would not be It would be a
technical like, well, I didn't get hurt,
so that's a win if you ran away, but
that would be the opposite of the moral
victory in that case. Trying your best
and losing would still be, I would say,
the honorable thing to do. So what
you're saying is sometimes you have to
pay the price for a moral victory.
Absolutely. But the reality is that
martial arts doesn't just teach us about
how to beat someone up or technique or
this or that. That's really not the core
of the martial arts. The core of the
martial arts is heart, discipline,
dedication, focus. And if you have those
things, there'll always be people better
than you and there'll always be people
lesser than you. But that's not the only
metric by which you can judge
performance or judge a person.