Cage-fighting as a way to manage trauma

In a cage at the back of a gym in Hounslow, London, men are practising choke holds. A trainer circles about them, squat and bustling. If impressed, he will swear at you, something he does often, but always with gleeful emphasis – “do not make love to him, fucking hit him!” This trainer is 33-year-old mixed martial arts fighter Shwan Bradosti (his name on the group’s Whatsapp thread is Angel of Death). Shwan’s coaching style is punishing but in a self-consciously theatrical way. More often than not he cajoles you into punching him. The chat is compulsive: the first time we meet he tells me he's an ex-sniper; that he wants to be an actor; that he has PTSD. “Everyone in my club has a history of war in them.” He speaks in a rushed way, which you later realise is shyness. “They tell you it’s because you’re mad but you’re not. War makes a scar in your head."

For a long time, the only real rules in Mixed Martial Arts were no biting and no eye gouging. John McCain famously called it “human cockfighting”. Fighters go barefoot, wear minimally padded gloves, and matches are held in cages so no one can fall out. The idea is that you can use any style of combat – jujitsu, karate, boxing, wrestling – to subdue your opponent. 

For two hours, three times a week, Shwan and his co-coach Ali — a lean, unnaturally patient MMA-addict in his forties — guide their team through a series of meditative, dance-like grapples. Cage-fighting, as Shwan sees it, is a way of living with unmanageable emotion: “When you’re a sniper it’s so close: you look through the lens and see the guy like I see you now. Of course, that does something to you.”

For the hours he spends at the gym, being inside his body and mind is made bearable. “When I fight I’m not some muscle head beating the shit out of people. It’s the thing that’s stopped me hurting more people.”

Cage-fighting involves being covered in another person’s sweat. Poses are intricate: your head pressed into your partner’s neck; their armpit over your shoulder. You are told never to look at the hands: look at the eyes. The idea is to find out who your opponent is. Reading someone’s personality in the way they move their body, or the restraint they show when they have you cornered, short-cuts intimacy. You become close in a quick, almost instinctual way.

Shwan introduces me to Andreeah – who at 15, is the only girl in the group – as the fighter most like himself. The three of us are eating a kebab together next to the gym, stitch-inducingly close to training time. “Same anger. That’s why I like her. She doesn’t give a fuck.”

Andreeah laughs, but then she contradicts him: “No, I never really feel angry.” Quiet and affectionate, there’s a single-mindedness about her. She is also the only person Shwan pretends not to notice when she cheats on the warmup exercise. “Some people fight because they have anger,” she says steadily, “But I’m calm. I do love the freedom of it though.”

"Bodily exhaustion can be a way of purging: of wringing your mind out so you can dull emotion"

Andreeah moved to Hounslow last year from Romania. She started hanging round the gym to fill time in the afternoons, watching the cage. When she finally approached Shwan, it was to ask him to teach her how to protect herself at school. Soon she will be ready to compete, and Shwan takes extravagant pride in her talent. He also worries over her. Three months ago Andreeah was contacted online by a group targeting Eastern European girls in the area. She was told she had been talent-spotted for modelling, but when she arrived, the studio was dirty, and two men took photos of her before demanding £300 to hand over the images. Her mother was with her; they just refused to pay the money and left.

While Andreeah is composed as she recounts this, Shwan is not. He seems convinced that, had she only trained more, this could not have happened to her. Fleeing civil war in Kurdistan in the 80s, Shwan grew up in foster-care in Hounslow and became involved in organised crime in his teens. Sometimes on the way home from the gym, he’ll just turn round and go back again. He says he has a childhood dread of what you can do with too much time.

The cage, for this group in Hounslow, has become a space of strange tenderness. Bodily exhaustion can be a way of purging: of wringing your mind out so you can dull emotion, because you’re too tired to really feel. But the psychological intensity of knowing and being known by your opponent suggests a sort of healing, rather than a deadening. I was first introduced to the group by Arnan*, a refugee from Afghanistan. Unable to work legally, he started training because he’d heard there were places you could earn quick money underground cage-fighting. Arnan never ended up competing, but the empty hours he spent at the gym offered a different kind of release. Fighting, in its physicality, demands that you inhabit and define the limits of your own body – an antidote to the sense of dislocation that had characterised the last six years he’d spent waiting for his papers. When training, Arnan would often visualise the things that had happened to him as a child. Something about the concentration required by the sport made him feel newly able to cope with his memories.

Shwan tells me there are times when he’s fighting it’s like he’s never felt anger or depression. As somebody keenly aware of what a delicate balancing act stability is — of how emotion can swallow you, or slip you over into a self you can’t recognise anymore — the allure of the cage is feeling viscerally present. The thrill of professional fighting, he explains, comes down to a crowd of people feeling something together in the same space — a ritual the group act out in miniature at the gym, three times a week: “You have to make them feel something! They have to love fighting. Otherwise what would be the point?”

Andreeah, 15

The third time I got in the cage, I did the arm bar. It’s a move I’d seen on YouTube where you catch the hand, and twist it to break the arm. I’d never done it before, but I had in my imagination. Growing up my grandparents wouldn’t let me learn MMA, but I watched so many videos online. There’s this one fighter back home in Romania, Diana Belbiţă, who does the best high kick in the head. Cage-fighting is not like karate where there are rules: you confuse them with your eyes, and then you can hit anyone, anywhere, any time.

Shwan, 33

Now when the flashbacks comes I go straight to the gym, start sparring. Even if I don’t actually train, I sit there. Talk to someone. I try to think maybe that person, I can help them. You know, depression and anxiety come in different forms. You don’t have to have killed people. Maybe she’s been abused. Maybe he did something he didn’t want to do, he was forced. In a funny way, the cage lets me feel something I miss about war. It’s the adrenalin I need. What I hate about coming home is I think too much.

Haroon, 42

I hand-make wedding dresses – around 400 a year – and my customers tend to want a lot of beads, lace and crystals. The beads are tiny – between 1-2mm. I can’t describe the feeling when it goes wrong and I have to unpick each bead individually. Fighting has so much movement; after a day sewing it’s a relief. Where I’m from MMA has a huge following; if you think about it, most Afghans are already professional fighters because of the war! But I’ve never liked the blood in the cage. Sometimes there’ll be broken noses, broken hands. But I do love that movement.

Connor, 34

I started Marshall arts when I was a kid. Obviously early 90s, late 80s in Hungary after communism it was all about ninja movies: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were in the cinemas. I was a poet in Hungary, but the problem is that when you’re writing, you have to keep reliving a memory in order to write accurately about those feelings. Fighting and writing are similar: the improvisation, the rhythm. It’s just that as a fighter you’re creative with your body, not your mind. The bleeding can be a confirmation: yeah I’m still alive. Even if I’ve trained so hard I can’t stand in the shower and I just have to hold onto the walls.

Junior, 15

I like to imagine there’s a crowd watching while I’m sparring. You’re meant to keep your hands up but sometimes I put them down, just to entertain them. Lately the thing that’s been testing me is my chin — so I just keep dancing: backing up, throwing combos, putting on a show. It makes me feel like I know who I want to be. Before, it was confusing, but now I’ve got everything set. I want to be a world class fighter. I want to be known.