Some guys just don’t get cauliflower ear.
CNN has a fantastic article about Usman Raja, the former British MMA fighter and respected trainer whose Unity Project uses fight training to rehabilitate convicted terrorists. You read that right: Raja’s plan is to make terrorists better at hand-to-hand combat. Anyone who came back for two day two of muay thai class knows how it feels to start learning a practical fighting system. It feels bad. The sensation of being a tough guy who can’t get the hang of a check-and-counter drill—or of being a talented striker who’s getting guillotined over and over the first month of jiu jitsu—is immensely humbling. That seems to be the operating principle of Raja’s approach. “Any idea you’ve got of yourself will be challenged as soon as you come in here,” he told CNN. “Once that idea of yourself is challenged and that opening happens we are able to go in and start dismantling that perception.”