I’ve never shaken while watch­ing TV before. Yet today I shook, I trem­bled, I bit my nails. A spe­cial was on 31 today called Bushido: The Way of the Warrior. I’ve never been much of a fight­ing fan. Boxing has always bor­ing, pro-wresting isn’t fight­ing at all, and UFC just never appealed to me. For some rea­son though, watch­ing Bushido sucked me in. They had the best matches I’ve ever seen before, real or fake.

The final title was fought between two large Japanese war­riors, and it was the one that really knocked the wind out of me. The match was extremely close, with one fighter being smaller than the other. The smaller one took a lot of leg hits in the begin­ning so was injured from the start. This dis­ad­van­tage, as well as his size dif­fer­ence, cost him the match, but not before he pulled off a scream­ing, adren­a­lin rush­ing, sitting-on-the-guy’s-ass boston crab and injur­ing him. There was one point where he had the larger fighter by the feet when the larger fighter was belly up on the mat. They were both try­ing to feel each other out, the smaller one look­ing for a sub­mis­sion open­ing, and the larger one try­ing to antic­i­pate the direc­tion of the move. The hands of the smaller one were tied up with the leg hold­ing, so his entire head was open to attack from his oppo­nent, which he did. Every time the larger guy punched his face, he got psy­ched, and kept shout­ing for more. He man­aged to pull the sub­mis­sion off, but it was reversed and he even­tu­ally lost the match.

I always find it inter­est­ing to know that I can feel some­thing dif­fer­ent, that I can react in a way that I haven’t been known to before, that I can shake from a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme. There are always things that I enjoy find­ing out about myself, because it feels like I’m not a sta­tic per­son, that there is the pos­si­bil­ity of change in me. Sometimes I’m sur­prised at my own con­fi­dence, or even stunned at the cere­bral­ity I’ve been able to gain.

If only my heart could change as well.