I was first to fight that night at Cowboy’s Dance Hall in San Antonio, Texas. It was a massive two-story Western-styled club where Texas Amateur Mixed Martial Arts regularly held events. The cage was set up toward one end of an attached rodeo arena with stadium seating and foldout chairs taking up the entire red-dirt floor.

I was nervous in the weeks leading up to the fight. I trained an average of four hours a day six days a week. In the weeks immediately before a fight one begins their fight camp —an extremely rigorous time of continuously intensifying exercise, training and sparring designed to be much more brutal than any fight. The fight itself is a reward. It’s a chance to finally get on stage and show how hard you’ve trained and display your acquired skills. In the last two hours of waiting the nervousness left me and I began to feel anxious to fulfill my purpose there.

Walking nearly naked through a crowd of 2,000 cheering people with all eyes on you is a surreal experience. It really gets the blood flowing. I got in the cage and my opponent was already there and looking, I thought, a bit nervous as it was also his debut. The announcer introduced us in the order we came out and everyone went absolutely wild when they discovered that he was in the Navy and I the Army! Classic grudge match! (There’s been a friendly rivalry between the US Army and Navy for as long as anyone knows.)

On the ref’s go we both came out fast trying to take center ring. I was amazed as my hands began throwing themselves in perfect, crisp, rapid motions completely without conscious guidance. I was on a ride now. Thoughts flowed but the majority of my actions were automatic, a product of countless hours of training. I blocked a head-high roundhouse and could see in my mind’s eye one of my teammate’s instructing me to always answer immediately. I threw a right cross followed by a left hook that caught him square in the jaw. He stumbled back, but at the time I didn’t notice that I had shaken him. I was so absorbed in the immensity of the moment. The world had receded. The noise from the crowd was gone. The referee was nowhere to be found. It was a singular moment where I was all there, experiencing everything, dancing alone with this stranger. It was perfect.

My opponent saw that he wasn’t going to beat me standing and shot in on me. After a brief tussle against the cage he got me down and proceeded to work his way through a series of holds that I was able to defend against, but it was clear he had the upper hand in the ground game. He knew his Jujitsu. I found myself getting choked in a new and exotic fashion and the general din of the scene was drowned and distorted by the wooshing thumping sounds of circulating blood. The edges of my vision were chewed up by invisible Langoliers until the world left me.

I heard one thing, my coach, wafting up through the fog.

“Talk on the telephone! Talk on the telephone!”

I had never heard him say this but figured that I must be getting a very important call from somewhere back in the real world. I pressed my free hand —he had me tied up pretty good— against my ear as hard as I could. It alleviated the pressure slightly but did nothing for the pain or blindness. Yet my focus was steady, and aside from my arm I relaxed, waiting for an opening.

An eternity passed before I felt my opponent begin shaking with the effort. He was wearing himself out. He relaxed for a moment and with an instant explosive movement I writhed around driving him to his back. I was now on top in full mount, one of the most dominate positions in Jujitsu. My sight and hearing came back just as the crowd detonated my eardrums. For the first time after throwing a punch I was aware of them.

They were cheering for me! No drug, no roller coaster, no accomplishment prior to this act of coming back from darkness to find myself bathed in light could compare. I was extraordinarily high. I pummeled him for the last few seconds of the round and at the bell jumped up as if I had won —a fact that my teammates later teased me mercilessly about. It was a rare, perfect moment.

But I didn’t win that fight. I lost halfway through the second round to an evil leg submission that torqued my knee and gave me a bitter beer face.

Do you know what happened immediately following that after our corners made sure we were alright? We hugged. Smiling and laughing like children we hugged. It was an incredible experience. There was no animosity between us. It wasn’t about that. It was a thorough testing of mind, body, and will. Our fight won the “fight of the night” award and loss notwithstanding I couldn’t have been happier.