When appearances deceive 

On a train to Edinburgh, a tense seat dispute taught me not to judge strangers too quickly

This year I’m continuing my resolution made in April 2025: Don’t raise your voice to strangers. My Edinburgh-bound train had stopped in Durham and two men in their twenties – one of them bespectacled – sat down across the aisle from me. A Big Guy in his thirties then appeared, asserted loudly that one of them was in his seat, and ordered them to leave. They explained politely why they were in the correct seats. Big Guy leaned in threateningly. I glanced across. One of the younger men adjusted his glasses and repeated quietly that these were their seats. On reaching Newcastle, Big Guy stormed off the train beneath a cloud of suppressed rage.

On our way again, the bespectacled man opened a sports bag and removed satin shorts and a striped satin singlet with the name ‘Gilbert’ on the back. Curious, I leaned across and asked his companion if they were boxers. “No,” he replied, indicating his friend, “Bailey’s a professional mixed martial arts [MMA] fighter – sometimes called cage fighters.” My first thoughts were that Big Guy had had the luckiest of escapes, and that hitting people who wear glasses can be freighted with great risk. Bailey – ‘The Bone Collector’ – Gilbert was competing at Glasgow’s Braehead Arena the following night, and a pleasant conversation ensued in which I learned about training, diet, and fight preparation from Bailey and his coach. But my main lesson was the folly of making character judgments based on a person’s appearance or occupation.

I sensed that the term “cage-fighting” had not earned my fellow travellers’ full endorsement, an impression reinforced after reading ‘Caged morality’ in the journal Qualitative Sociology (2011, 34: 143–175). In this article, Abramson and Modzelewski highlight the uncritical assumption that the motivations driving “the casual fan to watch men or women fight in a cage are the same as those that drive fighters to spend 20 to 30 hours a week in the gym”. Indeed, Abramson and Modzelewski found that many professional MMA athletes and coaches find the cage-fighting label distasteful as “[t]hey feel it plays upon imagined violence in the minds of observers while downplaying the skill and dedication they believe are at the sport’s core”.

Yet there is no denying that MMA can be hazardous. For example, Hutchison et al, writing in American Journal of Sports Medicine (2014, 42: 1352–1358), reported that their analysis of 844 MMA events between 2006 and 2012 found a knock-out (KO) rate of 6.4 per 100 athlete-exposures (12.7 per cent of matches), concluding that “[r]ates of KOs and technical KOs in MMA are higher than previously reported rates in other combative and contact sports”. And in the same issue of the journal Reider cites a meta-analysis of MMA injuries which found a composite injury rate of 229 per 1,000 athlete-exposures. Further, “[t]he portion of injuries sustained by the head was high, varying from 67 per cent to a whopping 78 per cent. Laceration (37 per cent to 59 per cent), fracture (7 per cent to 43 per cent), and concussion (4 per cent to 20 per cent) were the most common injury types.”

Perhaps it’s unsurprising to read that the British Medical Association (BMA) has previously called for mixed martial arts and boxing to be banned, as reported in the BMJ (2007,335:469). But in a spirited response to the article, GP Dr Robert Morley notes that MMA is “an amalgam of other combat formats, five of which are now Olympic sports. Some of the submission arm locking and choking techniques used in judo are identical to those used in MMA.… Would the BMA have judo banned too?” It’s a good question, and those favouring boxing and MMA bans should read the introduction to Hugh McIlvanney’s McIlvanney on Boxing (1996), where he suggests that talk from members of the BMA who chatter “about ‘legalised brain damage’ and ‘legalised grievous bodily harm’ is gimmicky sloganising, a case of going into the debating ring with a horseshoe in the glove”.

In any case, when it comes to “legalised grievous bodily harm” many of its leading exponents tend to be rugby players who sometimes swap punches during matches. Such displays don’t prompt medical authorities to call for the sport to be banned; indeed rugby-related thuggery is often viewed with twinkle-eyed tolerance and many a broad grin, inviting the inference that it’s simple over-exuberance from boys – and generally well-educated ones − who will be boys. It’s not the case today, but when organised brawling was deployed in the name of rugby – with management’s endorsement – participants’ reputations were enhanced, not diminished.

For example, the philosophy of “getting one’s retaliation in first” was epitomised during the 1974 British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa with the infamous ‘99’ call, which was not a call to arms, but a call for fists to be thrown. Such was his enthusiasm during what came to be known as the Battle of Boet Erasmus Stadium, that medic JPR Williams ran some 40 yards to punch opposing players.

I wish Bailey Gilbert a successful – and injury-free – 2026 and I hope that Big Guy keeps his temper under control.