I'm watching all these MMA training videos on youtube, with this coach who's giving commentary, and he talks a lot about etiquette and ego. Like, when you're sparring you're supposed to hit your opponent lightly because you're both just practicing your technique and so on, you're not supposed to hit them hard. But I guess a frequent-ish problem is things escalating, this coach keeps talking saying things like "see this guy's really great, he doesn't let his ego get in the way, the other guy got a sneaky hit off there and this guy was friendly about it", and he keeps talking in knowing terms about mild escalations. Like he'll say "her opponent did X, so her next hit was a little harder, just showing him not to do that" and so on, where X is something (evidently) annoying.
So it's like, an important aspect of etiquette is not hitting too hard during sparring, but also it's expected that there will be these little minor breaks somewhat frequently. And I kind of wonder... is this kind of behavior a personality trait that's being selected for among MMA enthusiasts, or is it inherent to the activity. Like, usually I'm an absolutely non-competitive person, I just don't care about winning at things. And I don't have this like, strong urge to punish slights against me, right, like in life if someone annoys me my default response is to ignore them, I don't have an impulse to "return fire". So would I do better, if it were me? Or is there something inherent to being hit a bunch, even lightly, that brings out the aggression in you? I suspect there might be. I suspect even I might, you know, bop a guy a little hard if he got me with a particularly sneaky move, it might just be part of human nature.
I don't really know but it's interesting to contemplate.
