Stop Scandalizing Fighters Quitting

There’s a purpose to resolve, particularly in fight sports. It’s impossible to progress without resolve, much less be your best. Without resolve, it’s difficult to build character or discover yourself. Your limits can never be tested if you lack the resolve to push yourself to a place where that’s an option. In a sport as difficult and arduous as mixed martial arts (MMA), a lack of resolve is as close to a career death penalty as it gets.

The problem with resolve in fight sports, however, is not that fighters lack it. In fact, if anything, it’s that resolve is taken so seriously as to become burdensome and poisonous. The will to win and persevere is so strong that pursuit of the fight or goals continues even as it leads to disaster through self harm.

There is a bizarre superstition around quitting in combat sports. The constant claim one hears is that quitting is the ultimate sin, both because it kills the present struggle and sets up an easier defeat in the next. Once you quit, the thinking goes, it gives you permission to do so again when the difficulties become too great.