Fighter

Early last fall, Marquis came to us at his mother’s insistance. He had been withdrawn from public school last year due to his penchant for fighting, and was still showing a troubling tendency to throw punches—at walls or at people—to vent.

While debriefing his intake interview, I learned that he aspires to be a professional mixed martial artist. His responses to some of the questions seemed on the surface to second his mom’s assessment that he has “anger issues.” But the interview also revealed a young man who is quiet, thoughtful, and respectful.

Later that month, we matched Marquis with Jeremy, a mentor who might also be described as quiet, thoughtful, and respectful.

Jeremy brought Marquis to one of our group events in November, a fall festival in a community where we work. I used their attendance as an opportunity to catch up on how their match was going. First I spoke with Jeremy for a little while as Marquis stood on the curb, hands in pockets, staring off into the distance.

When I moved on from Jeremy to talk with Marquis, he gave me his take—but he made me work for it. It was a few minutes into our conversation when I finally asked a question that elicited more than a one- or two-word answer: “What’s your favorite thing you’ve done with Jeremy so far?” His response came without so much as a moment’s hesitation: “We went to an MMA event together.”

For the uninitiated, MMA stands for mixed martial arts, which Wikipedia describes as “a full contact combat sport that allows the use of both striking and grappling techniques, both standing and on the ground, from a variety of other combat sports.”

At their initial training, we give mentors a list of 101 free or low-cost activities they can do with a young person. It’s not intended as a comprehensive list, but as a tool for mentors wondering how to spend time with a teen they’ve just met. Nowhere on that list is “attend a fight.” I’m so glad Jeremy didn’t stick to the script.

Fighting can get a young man suspended and eventually expelled from school. Or, constrained and focused in the right direction, it can instill in him the discipline and resiliency he’ll need to push back at the influences that will try to steal his potential.

I haven’t been there for most of the time Jeremy has spent with Marquis, but I can bet he hasn’t used that time to deliver lectures about how fighting is bad, how Marquis would be better off dropping this dream of becoming a pro fighter and just “fit the mold.”

That approach usually has the effect of shutting a teen down, causing an already-withdrawn young man to withdraw further. That’s not what I oberved in my talk with Marquis that November afternoon. It took the right conversation thread to get there, but what surfaced was a groundswell of appreciation that he has a mentor who “gets him.”

Marquis isn’t the only one satisfied with his match. When I spoke with his mom around Christmas, she gushed about the improvements she’s seen in his behavior and how happy she is that he spends time with Jeremy.

Will you see Marquis on pay-per-view in a few years, competing for an Ultimate Fighting Championship title? I can’t say. I will say, though, that this young man has much more than a puncher’s chance at making it in life.