Why fight? Today's answer

So we get to this question, why do I want to fight at all? The funny thing is that to my non-kickboxing friends no answer is sufficient and to those who fight no answer is really necessary, so any answer has to be to the folks that I do this sort of stuff with:

That is who practice Muay thai (and "advanced acting for action movies") but not really with plans to ever compete.

So here are the reasons I think I am doing this: reach and focus.

Reach, one should not just do things that you know you can accomplish and I don't really know that this is doable. I have set this goal to do something hard because that makes me better at everything I do. There are moments, a lot of moments, when this seems stupid or undoable and I have to remind myself that this is precisely the point.

Focus, this goal is making me better at the things I can already do by forcing me to consider everything I do in training in light of whether it is viable in an actual bout. If it is silly or stiff or too complicated, then its back to basics and practice, practice, practice until I can't do a move wrong. When I don't want to workout I ask myself if my potential opponent is doing the same. Turn's out that bastard is working and so I have to as well. All of this is disciplined by the fact that what lies at the end of this road is a set of ropes that I have to climb over to stand across from someone who is there with the specific purpose of knocking me unconscious. That's an attention holder.