I Have Seen People Bring the Wrong Grip to the Right Fight

Corner of my old block, a guy I grew up with. Good heart, real fire, absolutely certain. Every conversation he walked into, he swung. Every single one. Truth, always truth, never once wrong on the facts, and he emptied every room he entered inside four minutes.

Same street, different guy. Other problem. He reasoned. He explained. He waited for the perfect sentence while the situation in front of him closed like a door, and by the time he had it right there was nobody left to say it to.

Neither one was carrying a defective weapon. Both were carrying the wrong grip into that particular fight.

Posture is the whole thing. When you stand, when you move, when you hold, when you refuse to swing at all. Some of you have been losing fights you were equipped to win, and blaming your faith, and it was never your faith. It was your stance.

And listen. Some of you are not losing. Some of you have been fighting on instinct and winning and you do not know why, which means you cannot repeat it and you cannot teach it to anybody coming up behind you. That is its own kind of loss.

You are in a fight. You have been in it a while. Nobody ever told you what your stance was, so you improvised, and you have been paying for the parts you improvised wrong.