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From Cameron Conaway, on his post Stereotyping The Fighter:
The truer stereotype of fighters is this: most of us were scared of being men. We were scared that if a situation arose we wouldn’t be able to protect ourselves or our loved ones. Most of us came to the sport broken in some way—broken families, broken relationships, a broken sense of self and self-esteem and confidence. Most of us, through the grind of training and through the trust of our training partners and our coaches, were shaped into far better men than we previously were. Society can tout fighters as “the manliest of men” all they want. The truth is that most of us became fighters because we had scared little boys trapped inside of us.