It's a knockout
The big impact of a small community
You may or may not know that MMA is a big part of my life, despite never having trained in the sport and only attending a handful of fight events.
That’s because my husband Craig is an MMA coach and has competed in the sport on and off since his early 20s.
Last weekend, one of the lads he trains fought and won at a local amateur event. This is the second victory for this fighter and Craig’s gym.
I was digging on Facebook for some photos, and found this status of Craig’s from 2022:
To tell the whole story, we’ll need to go back to 2013, when we first met.
It was my shift working in a bar in the posh student part of town—a bank holiday, nonetheless. After a 12-hour manic day of pulling pints and collecting glasses, the team was allowed to hang around and have a pint after closing to celebrate the efforts of the day.
I didn’t really know anyone, so I was standing sipping my shandy, and I noticed most of the staff were gathered around one tall table. At this table, a blond lad sat telling a wild story of the night before. He’d competed in a local MMA fight and won by submission in the first few seconds of the first round. My first reaction was an eye roll, ngl.
Now, despite what the poster of 2011’s Warrior with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton on my student bedroom wall might have had you believe, I was not really into MMA.
A few shifts later, I was working on the main bar with the lad (who turned out to be Craig). We chatted, and, in a huge surprise to me, he had an English degree (he could read! Who knew?!). We ended up getting on like a house on fire, communicating mostly in Red Dwarf quotes, and moving in together two weeks later.
Craig continued to train and fight competitively for a few years after this, and I picked up enough info to nod along when he monologued… I learned (and was disappointed in) the definition of a rear-naked choke. I became a human dummy for ‘testing’ techniques.
We left the bar and got ‘proper’ jobs. He would commute from Cramlington to Sunderland to train, then back to Newcastle to our tiny studio flat. Over all these years, as he’s gone from one ADHD hyperfixation to another, I have never known him more dedicated to anything than to this sport.
Eventually, Craig stopped training as often when adulthood took its grip on our lives and work became the priority. We went travelling, and he trained Muay Thai on Koh Samui. We propped up at a bar at 10 a.m. on a tiny island off Bali called Nusa Lembongan, watching the UFC on a tiny, grainy TV.
The sport was always a part of our lives. A constant in uncertain times.
When he came back from Australia, he dug out his gi and went back to rolling on the mats… but never with as much zeal as he did in the first few years of our relationship.
For years, I have told him he should start his own gym or teach a class, but there was never time to explore such a venture. Then, in 2022, he posted this Facebook status after realising that there was nowhere in our region to train MMA specifically (only BJJ, kickboxing, and Muay Thai gyms).
Despite time away from the sport, his network pulled through, and everyone encouraged him to start his own class at a local kickboxing gym.
He had never formally coached before, and yet (I think) this is perhaps his greatest skill.
A few young lads started training regularly, and now he has a class that draws newbies and experienced fighters every week. He offers a place of support and guidance. He accepts people for who they are. He spots greatness and encourages it. Coaching isn’t the same as being really good at a sport, it’s about moulding and shaping— simply helping people to find and become the best versions of themselves.
In the wider context of our lives' chaos, Craig recently took a full-time contract role that sees him working in Edinburgh two full days a week. Upon securing this role, his classes were at the forefront of the negotiation process. He would not take a job if it meant he would have to stop teaching.
So now, he coaches on Monday nights, gets a 7 a.m. train to Edinburgh on Tuesdays, works two full days, then gets off the train on Wednesday night and drives directly to the gym to teach again.
This dedication is like nothing I have ever seen from him (or from anyone). He is exhausted (as am I, picking up the slack at home, haha), but it’s not even a choice in his mind— this class is the highlight of these lads’ weeks. They are acquiring skills, building friendships, and, perhaps unintentionally, creating a third space where they can talk and be heard.
Now, he doesn’t know I am writing about this, so I will stop with the soppiness. What I want to end on and send you away with is the idea that starting something might be more achievable than you thought.
Like Doc said, “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
Even in today’s hyperindividualistic culture, we can come together and create and foster small communities that make a vast, truly unquantifiable difference to the lives of people who join us. And in many ways, I do actually think this is the only viable approach to making a positive influence in a world that’s essentially burning around us—building and maintaining spaces where people can truly be themselves.
There’s something beautifully simple about just having somewhere to go.
To belong.
And Craig’s done that with this class.
I’m proud.
A few other things I’ve enjoyed this week:
🎥 Flora and Son (Apple TV)
📺 Film Club (BBC): Aimee Lou Wood co-wrote and starred in this six-episode show about a woman who is unable to leave the house after a breakdown but channels all of her energy into a weekly film club with her friends. As an autistic person with a special interest in film, I was deeply moved by this.
📚 The South by Tash Aw
See you next week,
Ellen x
Loved this piece! Similarly, my own husband owes a lot of his friendships and even his career path to skateboarding (in fact, we probably wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for skateboarding!)
It’s a topic I’ve been dabbling in via draft because I think having a community is so important for our focus, self-esteem, relationship building etc and it’s sadly dying out!
So great that Craig hasn’t just been part of that community, he’s actually created one!
As discussed, my husb does jiu jitsu and the dog and I help with his training (being wrestled at random whilst going about our days). I'd never thought of it as a third space but you are so right