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We’ve sat and talked at length about his philosophies of fighting and I’ve watched him train and spar several times. He employs a melange of styles, but not haphazardly. Roy is a classic new-school MMA practitioner: it’s not meathead bar-brawl stuff he employs, it’s more like chess with submissions. Roy is convinced that there is something elemental about fighting, especially martial arts, mixed or otherwise: “There’s no hiding when you’re fighting. That’s the realness of it—it’s an expression of you.”

Sure, but I think that’s really true about hockey or dancing too. You learn so much about someone just by playing a little pick-up ball or baling hay or cleaning a house with them. It’s not easy to hide yourself on the court or when doing hard work with someone. Roy tells me,

That’s exactly what I teach my students: to be connected to your opponent. If you can’t get into a relationship with your opponent you’re already in trouble. You have to focus completely. No matter what happened to you that day you have to leave it behind. In that way we could say that what happens outside the ring is less real than what happens in it.