Philadelphia Weekly

Photographs by Michael Persico

Why I Fight subhead:

caption: Mixed martial arts has hit the mainstream. Steve Volk gets his ass kicked investigating the sport's burgeoning popularity. caption: Getting a leg up: The core of Thai training involves striking pads as above, but sometimes students gently strike each other. caption: While the punches Khara Cartagena throws here recall boxing, the kicks and knees typify Thai. -->

My first class at the Body Arts Gym, I don't walk in the door as much as shamble.

I'm 5 foot 9 and 214 pounds. When I make faltering attempts to exercise, my girlfriend, a physical therapist, sees me sprawled on the floor and comments on my lack of flexibility with customary dry wit.

"Oh my God," she says.

I'm 37 and suffer from chronic lower back pain that radiates into my right thigh. Three toes and the sole of my right foot are numb. In the morning I waddle down the steps, my hips tight from inactivity.

The instructor Angel Cartagena starts us off with jumping jacks, which produce painful cramps in both my feet. Then he calls for "six-count squat thrusts."

I try to follow along through what seems a complex series of squats, push-ups and jumps. The push-ups aren't a problem, but after one jump a muscle in my back angrily squeezes the lower vertebrae of my spine, pumping fire into my right leg.

When I keep going, the pain soon morphs into a more general feeling of shock and fatigue.

For an hour and 15 minutes I'm asked to do things I can't do--like kick my foot above my head or throw a punch while jumping.

My assigned partner, introduced to me as "Gunner," looks to be more than 6 feet tall and close to 300 pounds. I punch and kick at pads Gunner holds, and he punches and kicks at pads I hold. Did I mention Gunner weighs close to 300 pounds? I suck at air like a fish in a beer cooler, oxygen too solid for me to draw into my lungs.

By the end of class I'm exhausted, and all I've done is dip a numb toe into the leading edge of a wave the Body Arts Gym has ridden for years. Thai boxing, in which practitioners are trained to strike not just with their hands and feet but with their elbows, shins and knees, is among the dominant forms in the mixed martial arts leagues rapidly gaining popularity among young men. And Cartagena has been committed to Thai for roughly a decade.

"Angel is one of the very, very few people in this business who I genuinely enjoy working with," says Justin Blair, a New York fight promoter. "He's trustworthy, and he comes to fight. His fighters are very well prepared. And more than that, the people who come to our events tend to be young and hip, and so are Angel's fighters. I think for our crowd it's a little bit like seeing themselves in the ring."

But seeing themselves in the ring and actually climbing into one are very different things. At Body Arts Gym, making that switch requires a long, arduous trip from this world--where pain is something to be avoided--to another in which sweat equals salvation, and kicking someone in the head is an expression of love.

For Angel's 40th birthday, his wife Khara invites everyone from the gym to Siam Lotus, a Thai restaurant on Spring Garden Street.

By 11 p.m. the restaurant is filled with friends, family and students. Angel mingles, but he's interested mainly in the Ultimate Fighting Championships airing on a big flat-screen above the bar. The lines in his boyish face deepen in the shadows. His wife bops around a little, dancing in the limited available space.

A tiny woman of Philippine descent, Khara is a fighter herself, with a 1-1 record in amateur Thai bouts. Angel refers to her affectionately as a "mean little pirate."