I remember the first time I sat ringside at a cage fight. The steel door slammed shut, and two fighters stood inches apart, fists twitching, eyes locked. To the untrained eye, it looked like sanctioned chaos—punches flying, bodies colliding, the roar of the crowd drowning out every thought.
But as I watched, I realized what I was seeing wasn’t pure violence. There was discipline. Strategy. Control. Every move calculated, every strike measured. And later that night—when I ended up at the same after-party as the very fighters who had just been trying to knock each other out—I saw the paradox up close: two men who had just bloodied each other laughing, sharing drinks, and slapping each other on the back like brothers. Ferocity in the cage, decency outside it.
In MMA, as in life, the most dangerous blow is the one you never anticipate. The jab you didn’t see. The kick you weren’t guarding against. The knockdown you don’t see coming. The question is not if you’ll be hit, but how you’ll respond. Do you thrash back in panic? Do you collapse in defeat? Or do you steady yourself, breathe, and rise with composure? This is where Stoicism enters the octagon.
Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” Just because someone strikes you doesn’t mean you must mirror their anger. A Stoic fighter embodies this principle. Their aim is not cruelty, but mastery. True strength lies in restraint as much as in aggression.
My perspective on this world isn’t just as a fan. In my past life as an attorney, I’ve worked behind the scenes helping to launch one of MMA’s biggest stages. From contracts to negotiations, I saw up close how the sport demanded not only physical ferocity but also immense discipline and self-control. The best fighters understood that every punch was a choice.
But I also saw how easily things could go wrong. Ambition sometimes eclipsed fairness. Rivalries and business calculations could overwhelm kindness. The fight game mirrored life itself: victories are intoxicating, power blurs moral lines, and it becomes a lot easier to lose sight of justice.
Psychology offers a lens for this. For decades, researchers debated whether self-control is finite or infinite. Early work suggested willpower worked like a muscle that could be exhausted, but in the last decade, that view has been sharply challenged. Large replication efforts show the so-called “ego depletion” effect is far less reliable than once thought (Dang et al., 2021; Carter et al., 2015). More recent studies suggest self-control depends as much on motivation, attention, and belief as on biology (Inzlicht et al., 2014). In fact, people who see willpower as unlimited tend to perform better under strain (Job et al., 2013). Other research shows self-control can be cultivated alongside grit, like a skill honed through training and repetition (Duckworth & Gross, 2020). Fighters live this reality. The endless sparring, dieting, and drilling are more than physical conditioning—they are exercises in strengthening self-regulation under pressure.
Importantly, moral psychology also warns of the darker side of power. Studies by researchers like Dacher Keltner show that when people feel powerful, their empathy for others often diminishes, and their willingness to take risks increases. In MMA, that can show up as cutting corners or disregarding respect for an opponent. In business or politics, it might manifest as domination without decency. Without a counterweight of justice and kindness, discipline corrodes into viciousness.
And yet, the paradox remains: when the final bell rings, the same fighters who spent 20 minutes trying to break each other’s bodies often embrace. We’ve seen it in the heavyweight trilogy, too—for example, after Stipe Miocic reclaimed the belt, Daniel Cormier publicly congratulated him and praised his grit in defeat. The opponent was never an enemy to be destroyed, but an adversary who revealed their strength. That embrace is decency.
Life outside the cage isn’t much different. The people who knock us down—colleagues, critics, rivals, even loved ones—are often the very ones who sharpen us. We can meet them with strength, but also with understanding. We can strike back, but without cruelty. Stoicism demands discipline. Justice demands we fight clean.
The Stoics didn’t shy away from conflict; they sought to enter it wisely. In a way, the octagon is not just a cage in Las Vegas or Chicago—it is the arena of our daily lives. We will take hits. We will deliver them. But if we do so with restraint, kindness, and justice, fighting itself becomes something greater than domination. It becomes a practice of virtue.
Because in the end, the fight was never about destroying the other. It was always about mastering ourselves.
