After a month intense training and about a year of Muay Thai training overall, I had my first fight. I will put up a video of it when I get it, but it ain’t pretty. And by that I mean it is roughly thirty seconds of me getting my ass kicked until my coach put a stop to it.

I have had a bunch of reactions to the experience and am still trying to work them around in my head. These are some preliminary things I’ve learned:

0. My friends are awesome. Having a huge crowd cheering me on was great, especially since I have never had at before in my life. I wish I could have done better or at least lasted longer, but I will leave that for next time.

1. It’s always a fight. It doesn’t matter what the ref says, your coach says or anybody else about friendly sparring. Once it is you and him, go 100%, because he is going to try to take your head off. Given the level of skill difference, I still would have lost, but I would feel better about it.

2. Relaxation is important, but so is intensity. I have learned a lot about limiting intensity in my fight training so I can make it through longer training sessions. But a fight you have to be ready to go from the first bell. Realize the difference and respect that the person you are fighting is trying to hurt you. I need both calmness and intensity.

3. I need harder sparring. I love technical sparring as it has improved my skills. But, part of the training has to be the ability to get hit and still stay in the game. I was mentally overwhelmed by the initial onslaught and never recovered enough to even properly defend myself, much less have an offense.

4. I need to fight at a lower weight. I have my doubts as to whether my opponent was actually 180, but regardless, I am good at controlling my weight so I should be able to cut to 170 or 165.

All together, it was a valuable experience, but I would have preferred a fight that would have lasted longer so I could tell more about where the flaws in my technique are. Thankfully, I wasn’t injured so I should be able to get back to crossFit right after my long weekend. After I start feeling better, I can get back to training with better focus.