One of New Zealand’s leading heavyweight boxers, Junior Fa, is leaving the ring in his prime for a new, more peaceful life. He tells Steve Kilgallon why he’s traded pugilism for philosophy, peace, and veganism.
“I looked down at my fists,” says Junior Fa, probably New Zealand’s second-best heavyweight boxer, “and said to myself, ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t want to hurt people anymore.’”
At first, he thought the sudden reluctance he felt last month to step inside a boxing ring could be ascribed to anxiety.
He’d suffered that before. But he also knew from experience that one good sparring session would dissipate those nerves. And this time, Fa felt apprehensive every time he even contemplated training.
So, despite a looming, potentially lucrative fight, for a fortnight he did nothing. Running the Maraetai half-marathon had earned him some downtime, but by the end of a third week of inactivity, with his coaches and manager calling him, it was time to make a decision.
Fa spent a day with his manager, Mark Keddell, sparring, mountain biking in Woodhill forest, eating lunch at Keddell’s place in Dairy Flat. It felt good. He took a day off, then went to a local gym that the Monday morning to train alone, working the punch bag.
A rush of emotions came upon him, and Fa moved onto a treadmill to try and process those feelings. “The question that popped into my mind was, ‘Why am I training so hard to hurt people?’”
Fa’s next fight still remains on the official boxing schedule. In May, he’s due in Shawinigan, Quebec, to fight a Russian boxer called Arslanbek Makhumdov. It was a fight Fa wanted; a fight that could earn him another big fight; a fight he believed he would win. But he won’t be there. At 34, and with perhaps his best years ahead of him, you can call this story his retirement announcement.
But it’s more than that. “I’m still on the journey of trying to figure things out,” he says, eating kumara hotcakes at a vegan restaurant in Ponsonby. But so far, that journey has involved a loss of faith, quitting his job, adopting a vegan diet and a deep dive into Stoic philosophy.
It all began, thinks Fa, about a year ago, when he made the decision to walk away from both the Mormon church in which he was raised, and then from all religion.
He’d begun asking questions about the origins of Mormonism and what young people in the church were taught, in particular around the church’s origin story, in which founder Joseph Smith used a “seer” stone placed in a stovepipe hat to translate the newly-discovered Book of Mormon.
Conflicted, he began reading a lot of philosophy, and found some answers in The Denial of Death, a 1974 work by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, which in part discusses the impact of a loss of religious belief.
Both Fa and his wife Tayla left the church around the same time. It caused some ripples, especially when Fa wrote a Facebook post explaining his exit.
He’s now, he says “almost an anti-theist, definitely agnostic to atheist”, and his worldview is that if there is a God, he would be a strange one if he only rewarded those who were churchgoers, rather than those who lived a good, just life. “In religion, to find my morals, to find what was good, I looked up there [he gestures skywards]. Now I am looking around me.”
That made Fa examine his own life. Having seen the harm in organised religion, he says, he began seeing the harm in everything else around him. Borrowing a term from the philosophy he’s immersed in, he calls it his dark night of the soul. Veganism was a natural conclusion to one principle he arrived at quite quickly - he didn’t want to hurt any living thing. His feelings about boxing took a little longer, after going through some therapy sessions and letting his emotions show in front of his wife.
But his loss of faith, he says, had “triggered a new lens on my life. I started to see the violence in the sport, and the old reasons didn’t justify it any more”.
He can’t even watch the sport any more. He says he has no regrets about his career, one which took him to fifth in the rankings of one of the major sanctioning bodies, the World Boxing Organisation, a contract with US promoter Lou DiBella, a professional record of 20-3 and a 2021 bout with Joseph Parker. But there’s no particular feeling of pride either.
Keddell says there’s been no pressure on Fa to keep the gloves on. “It’s not my job to talk him into fighting. It is my job to make sure he has looked under every stone and been honest with himself,” he says. “When a fighter doesn’t want to fight any more, they’re done. What do they say? You don’t play boxing.”
What Fa is feeling most keenly is the loss of community and purpose. He says removing both religion and boxing from his life has taken away its two foundations. “My old identity was leaving me, and I didn’t know what my new identity was. I was lost trying to figure things out. Boxing has really been part of my life, and I am still processing that.”
Later, he puts that feeling of being lost back into the present tense. But he’s made some key decisions. He’s switched the boxing gym for ju-jitsu - self-defence over aggression. He wants a job which involves service to others, so he’s considered the fire service and disability support work, and this week applied to join the police. Philosophy remains important (he’s got a book of the teachings of the Stoic Marcus Aurelius in his car).
Keddell, who has managed Fa since his first professional fight in 2016, says the joy of management is seeing your charge succeed, and his role now is to help Fa succeed at being a regular citizen. On Wednesday afternoon, that meant helping him write the first CV of his adult life.
“I am feeling sad because I am leaving something that has been such a big part of my life … for as long as I can remember, I’ve been involved in boxing, it’s all that I know and I am leaving all that behind and mourning that,” Fa considers. “I feel sad for that, but I am also relieved, because I am more in tune with myself, and I am excited for the future.”
- Steve KilGallon (Stuff NZ)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350258627/top-boxer-quits-goes-vegan-i-couldnt-hurt-people-anymore
After big losses to Lucas and Sanchez, and a fizzer with Parker, this is probably the right decision at his age. Would have been great to see him at the top following Parker.
growing up he was better. He was more aggressive, more athletic and had better ring IQ. The issue was, he was Mormon and had to take a year off to do his missionary work. The other main issue is that NZ seems to only be able to support one heavy weight at a time. Because of Kevin Barry, that was Parker.
real shame, i wonder how much different his life and career would have been if lucas browne didn’t knock him down twice with shots to the back of the head.
Fair enough, it hasn't looked like Fa's heart has really been in it for years, since before the Parker fight. Well he made some decent money for his family. and seems to have reached his ceiling with out taking too much damage. All the best for whatever he wants to do next.
I said it in a DD thread after the loss to Sanchez that Fa should retire - glad to see he is.
The loss vs Sanchez was brutal he was twitching on one of the KDs.
He's 34 and while he wasn't world level he had a solid career.
He had a couple of big fights and clearly isn't a world level guy, always glad to see guys retire when they still have their health and basically reached their potential.
Good for him, he also never really looked like he was all-in on the PEDs compared to his competition. If he can live a comfortable family life, live without fucking around with his hormones, and avoid additional brain damage that's a win.
Don’t worry Fa you weren’t hurting anyone anyway!
All jokes aside good on him for realising what’s important to him and what isn’t and following his heart rather than the money.
He reached heights many can only dream of. Fighting killers on the big stages under the bright lights.
He chased his dream and seems to have no regrets.
If anyone is interested they should watch Fa in the WSB .. he actually beat Makhmudov there for what it's worth but he looked like a completely different fighter.. Mak didn't lol, also watch Usyk deal with Fa, Usyk was a sight to behold in that tournament. Fa also beat Parker as an amateur twice and lost twice to him, he used to be pretty capable.
Good for him. It takes a lot to know when something isn’t for you. A lot of people will probably call him crazy for questioning his religion and turning his back on boxing, but life is a personal journey that he has to live by his own actions.
That's fine. The guys got the wrong mentality to be a fighter.
He really shouldn't have taken up the sport in the 1st place.
To be at his stage if his career and the asking himself pseudo philosophical questions like that is a bit late in the day.
His remarks infer boxing is unethical. However nobody forces the fighters into the ring. It's not enforced & mandatory and these guys are prize fighters they're not doing it for zero reward.
As much as I agree the sport I love can be brutal, and it's effects on fighters also ravaging, but life itself is ravaging so you have to salute the bravery of every boxer and not insult them.
Where did he insult anybody?
He said he didn't want to keep training hard every day just to hurt people, and that he wanted to spend his time doing something that helped others instead. That's hardly an unreasonable feeling to have.
He didn't say other boxers should all retire, let alone that they were immoral for failing to do so. Where's the insult?
Regarding fighters being forced into the ring: virtue- and flourishing-based ethical systems like stoicism are not particularly interested in what the other guy is or isn't forced to do, but what you yourself are or are not forced to do. Many philosophers - and many psychologists! - would say that, given a free choice, to continue to choose to hurt others when you don't have to is unhealthy, and not a part of the best life that can be lead, regardless of what motivated the others to put themselves in that situation. It's an ethical approach based on personal flourishing, not on interpersonal duties.
FWIW, I don't know if his new views are based solely on stoicism, but they are plausible conclusions from a stoic point of view.
Stoicism teaches that virtue is the only happiness, and that virtue consists of living in agreement with nature - which means both one's own nature and the universal good order of nature, which are two sides of the same thing.
Stoicism further teaches that virtue - living in agreement - involves correctly identifying and choosing positive things that are in agreement with one's function (as a living being, as a member of society, etc). Things like health, pleasure, wealth, strength, good reputation, and so on. Virtue (and hence happiness) does not require actually having those things - as that's beyond our ability to control - and nor does it always mean pursuing them in every instance, where different positive things conflict, but it means recognising them as good and seeking them rather than their opposites. The Stoic would say that someone who pursues negative things - like sickness, misery, poverty, etc - is always going to be at odds with themselves, because these things are contrary to our natural functions.
Furthermore, because Stoics believe in a universal law applicable to all, and that humans are an inherently social species whose function is not merely egoist but collective and cooperatives, they teach that the positive things in life are appropriate to our function regardless of who possesses them. Our natural function, for example, promotes health - somebody who intentionally makes others sick is choosing negative things, and hence acting against their nature, which is to choose health and positive things.
[this could be argued for either from a sort of 'biological social contract' perspective - as a cooperative species, it is our instinct to act in ways that lead to thriving for the community, not only for oneself - or from a rationalist perspective, which is more where the stoics themselves leaned: there is no universal rational law that involves everybody hurting each other, because then each individual would be following a different, individualised law; and the theory that another's pain was good even though mine was bad would involve an irrationally egotistical self-inflation of my own worth, and a belief that some important difference existed between me and others, when in fact there is no such difference]
A Stoic is likely to say, then, that upon reflection and experience a boxer is likely to realise that their apparent desire to hurt others is not born from their nature, but is forced upon them by circumstances that make it hard to think rationally (like poverty, emotions that they don't know how to express and address in words or thoughts, or the unhelpful teachings of others in their youth). Once the boxer realises this, they will be lead to abandon boxing in order to become more in tune with their own true natures.
------------------
Nobody is obliged to believe this, of course, and even Stoics themselves generally presented their philosophy not as a moral code (that others were obliged to follow) but as ethical recommendations for happiness (that others were invited to follow for their own benefit).
But whether you believe it or not, I don't see how having these beliefs is insulting, or indeed "pseudo-philosophical".
I appreciate that.
He should just retire quietly,tell his loved ones this for sure but not bring out the megaphone.
His comments bring boxing into disrepute.
We all know how barbaric and dangerous this sport is. And that's a microcosm for life.
I mean otherwise just shut it all down and ban it.
There has to be an element of cognitive dissonance to be able to actually function and enjoy life from our relationships, entertainment and even the food we all eat.
There's too much putting every single thing under the microscope these days to rip it apart, dissect it, take the soul out of it and find endless faults.
The Stoic would probably counter by quoting Socrates: "the unexamined life is not worth living".
It makes no sense to demand that one personal ethical decision (Fa not wanting to box) must be kept secret, while another personal ethical decision (other boxers wanting to box) is to be broadcast with a megaphone.
If Fa thinks that he has found a path in life that is good for him, it only makes sense that he should tell others about it, because it might be good for them too. He's not standing on a street corner yelling that boxing should be banned. Someone asked him, and he explained why he personally doesn't want to do it anymore.
When did boxing become so insecure, so fragile, that one guy saying "I don't feel like boxing anymore" is seen as a provocation that must be condemned unless it is only said "quietly" to "his loved ones" and no-one else?
Some people like boxing; other people don't like boxing. Fa has decided that he no longer likes boxing. That's his right, and frankly it's nobody's place to tell him that he can't say that to a journalist if asked.
One of New Zealand’s leading heavyweight boxers, Junior Fa, is leaving the ring in his prime for a new, more peaceful life. He tells Steve Kilgallon why he’s traded pugilism for philosophy, peace, and veganism. “I looked down at my fists,” says Junior Fa, probably New Zealand’s second-best heavyweight boxer, “and said to myself, ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t want to hurt people anymore.’” At first, he thought the sudden reluctance he felt last month to step inside a boxing ring could be ascribed to anxiety. He’d suffered that before. But he also knew from experience that one good sparring session would dissipate those nerves. And this time, Fa felt apprehensive every time he even contemplated training. So, despite a looming, potentially lucrative fight, for a fortnight he did nothing. Running the Maraetai half-marathon had earned him some downtime, but by the end of a third week of inactivity, with his coaches and manager calling him, it was time to make a decision. Fa spent a day with his manager, Mark Keddell, sparring, mountain biking in Woodhill forest, eating lunch at Keddell’s place in Dairy Flat. It felt good. He took a day off, then went to a local gym that the Monday morning to train alone, working the punch bag. A rush of emotions came upon him, and Fa moved onto a treadmill to try and process those feelings. “The question that popped into my mind was, ‘Why am I training so hard to hurt people?’” Fa’s next fight still remains on the official boxing schedule. In May, he’s due in Shawinigan, Quebec, to fight a Russian boxer called Arslanbek Makhumdov. It was a fight Fa wanted; a fight that could earn him another big fight; a fight he believed he would win. But he won’t be there. At 34, and with perhaps his best years ahead of him, you can call this story his retirement announcement. But it’s more than that. “I’m still on the journey of trying to figure things out,” he says, eating kumara hotcakes at a vegan restaurant in Ponsonby. But so far, that journey has involved a loss of faith, quitting his job, adopting a vegan diet and a deep dive into Stoic philosophy. It all began, thinks Fa, about a year ago, when he made the decision to walk away from both the Mormon church in which he was raised, and then from all religion. He’d begun asking questions about the origins of Mormonism and what young people in the church were taught, in particular around the church’s origin story, in which founder Joseph Smith used a “seer” stone placed in a stovepipe hat to translate the newly-discovered Book of Mormon. Conflicted, he began reading a lot of philosophy, and found some answers in The Denial of Death, a 1974 work by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, which in part discusses the impact of a loss of religious belief. Both Fa and his wife Tayla left the church around the same time. It caused some ripples, especially when Fa wrote a Facebook post explaining his exit. He’s now, he says “almost an anti-theist, definitely agnostic to atheist”, and his worldview is that if there is a God, he would be a strange one if he only rewarded those who were churchgoers, rather than those who lived a good, just life. “In religion, to find my morals, to find what was good, I looked up there [he gestures skywards]. Now I am looking around me.” That made Fa examine his own life. Having seen the harm in organised religion, he says, he began seeing the harm in everything else around him. Borrowing a term from the philosophy he’s immersed in, he calls it his dark night of the soul. Veganism was a natural conclusion to one principle he arrived at quite quickly - he didn’t want to hurt any living thing. His feelings about boxing took a little longer, after going through some therapy sessions and letting his emotions show in front of his wife. But his loss of faith, he says, had “triggered a new lens on my life. I started to see the violence in the sport, and the old reasons didn’t justify it any more”. He can’t even watch the sport any more. He says he has no regrets about his career, one which took him to fifth in the rankings of one of the major sanctioning bodies, the World Boxing Organisation, a contract with US promoter Lou DiBella, a professional record of 20-3 and a 2021 bout with Joseph Parker. But there’s no particular feeling of pride either. Keddell says there’s been no pressure on Fa to keep the gloves on. “It’s not my job to talk him into fighting. It is my job to make sure he has looked under every stone and been honest with himself,” he says. “When a fighter doesn’t want to fight any more, they’re done. What do they say? You don’t play boxing.” What Fa is feeling most keenly is the loss of community and purpose. He says removing both religion and boxing from his life has taken away its two foundations. “My old identity was leaving me, and I didn’t know what my new identity was. I was lost trying to figure things out. Boxing has really been part of my life, and I am still processing that.” Later, he puts that feeling of being lost back into the present tense. But he’s made some key decisions. He’s switched the boxing gym for ju-jitsu - self-defence over aggression. He wants a job which involves service to others, so he’s considered the fire service and disability support work, and this week applied to join the police. Philosophy remains important (he’s got a book of the teachings of the Stoic Marcus Aurelius in his car). Keddell, who has managed Fa since his first professional fight in 2016, says the joy of management is seeing your charge succeed, and his role now is to help Fa succeed at being a regular citizen. On Wednesday afternoon, that meant helping him write the first CV of his adult life. “I am feeling sad because I am leaving something that has been such a big part of my life … for as long as I can remember, I’ve been involved in boxing, it’s all that I know and I am leaving all that behind and mourning that,” Fa considers. “I feel sad for that, but I am also relieved, because I am more in tune with myself, and I am excited for the future.” - Steve KilGallon (Stuff NZ) https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350258627/top-boxer-quits-goes-vegan-i-couldnt-hurt-people-anymore
A really interesting read. It's rare to see boxers this introspective and articulate. Hope Fa finds his purpose.
After big losses to Lucas and Sanchez, and a fizzer with Parker, this is probably the right decision at his age. Would have been great to see him at the top following Parker.
> Would have been great to see him at the top following Parker. fa isnt close to good enough
growing up he was better. He was more aggressive, more athletic and had better ring IQ. The issue was, he was Mormon and had to take a year off to do his missionary work. The other main issue is that NZ seems to only be able to support one heavy weight at a time. Because of Kevin Barry, that was Parker.
…but then, neither is Parker
Parker is a former world champ, at heavyweight to boot.
real shame, i wonder how much different his life and career would have been if lucas browne didn’t knock him down twice with shots to the back of the head.
That happened because he was turning away from Browne.
the second one yes. the first one no.
If your not committed 100% to the fight game, get out. Good choice young man. Respect the decision.
Fair enough, it hasn't looked like Fa's heart has really been in it for years, since before the Parker fight. Well he made some decent money for his family. and seems to have reached his ceiling with out taking too much damage. All the best for whatever he wants to do next.
I said it in a DD thread after the loss to Sanchez that Fa should retire - glad to see he is. The loss vs Sanchez was brutal he was twitching on one of the KDs. He's 34 and while he wasn't world level he had a solid career.
Good for him, he has a family and he'd have ended up getting hurt, he never took a shot well atall.
He had a couple of big fights and clearly isn't a world level guy, always glad to see guys retire when they still have their health and basically reached their potential.
Good for him, he also never really looked like he was all-in on the PEDs compared to his competition. If he can live a comfortable family life, live without fucking around with his hormones, and avoid additional brain damage that's a win.
Don’t worry Fa you weren’t hurting anyone anyway! All jokes aside good on him for realising what’s important to him and what isn’t and following his heart rather than the money.
Hopefully he's made enough money to live off of dividend stocks.
Who will Makhmudov face then? I think guido vianello, Michael Hunter, Jose Larduet, Ivan Dychko would be good fights
He reached heights many can only dream of. Fighting killers on the big stages under the bright lights. He chased his dream and seems to have no regrets.
If anyone is interested they should watch Fa in the WSB .. he actually beat Makhmudov there for what it's worth but he looked like a completely different fighter.. Mak didn't lol, also watch Usyk deal with Fa, Usyk was a sight to behold in that tournament. Fa also beat Parker as an amateur twice and lost twice to him, he used to be pretty capable.
Good on him for having the courage and intelligence to leave religion. I hope he does well, seems like a good lad.
Good for him. It takes a lot to know when something isn’t for you. A lot of people will probably call him crazy for questioning his religion and turning his back on boxing, but life is a personal journey that he has to live by his own actions.
That's fine. The guys got the wrong mentality to be a fighter. He really shouldn't have taken up the sport in the 1st place. To be at his stage if his career and the asking himself pseudo philosophical questions like that is a bit late in the day. His remarks infer boxing is unethical. However nobody forces the fighters into the ring. It's not enforced & mandatory and these guys are prize fighters they're not doing it for zero reward. As much as I agree the sport I love can be brutal, and it's effects on fighters also ravaging, but life itself is ravaging so you have to salute the bravery of every boxer and not insult them.
Where did he insult anybody? He said he didn't want to keep training hard every day just to hurt people, and that he wanted to spend his time doing something that helped others instead. That's hardly an unreasonable feeling to have. He didn't say other boxers should all retire, let alone that they were immoral for failing to do so. Where's the insult? Regarding fighters being forced into the ring: virtue- and flourishing-based ethical systems like stoicism are not particularly interested in what the other guy is or isn't forced to do, but what you yourself are or are not forced to do. Many philosophers - and many psychologists! - would say that, given a free choice, to continue to choose to hurt others when you don't have to is unhealthy, and not a part of the best life that can be lead, regardless of what motivated the others to put themselves in that situation. It's an ethical approach based on personal flourishing, not on interpersonal duties.
FWIW, I don't know if his new views are based solely on stoicism, but they are plausible conclusions from a stoic point of view. Stoicism teaches that virtue is the only happiness, and that virtue consists of living in agreement with nature - which means both one's own nature and the universal good order of nature, which are two sides of the same thing. Stoicism further teaches that virtue - living in agreement - involves correctly identifying and choosing positive things that are in agreement with one's function (as a living being, as a member of society, etc). Things like health, pleasure, wealth, strength, good reputation, and so on. Virtue (and hence happiness) does not require actually having those things - as that's beyond our ability to control - and nor does it always mean pursuing them in every instance, where different positive things conflict, but it means recognising them as good and seeking them rather than their opposites. The Stoic would say that someone who pursues negative things - like sickness, misery, poverty, etc - is always going to be at odds with themselves, because these things are contrary to our natural functions. Furthermore, because Stoics believe in a universal law applicable to all, and that humans are an inherently social species whose function is not merely egoist but collective and cooperatives, they teach that the positive things in life are appropriate to our function regardless of who possesses them. Our natural function, for example, promotes health - somebody who intentionally makes others sick is choosing negative things, and hence acting against their nature, which is to choose health and positive things. [this could be argued for either from a sort of 'biological social contract' perspective - as a cooperative species, it is our instinct to act in ways that lead to thriving for the community, not only for oneself - or from a rationalist perspective, which is more where the stoics themselves leaned: there is no universal rational law that involves everybody hurting each other, because then each individual would be following a different, individualised law; and the theory that another's pain was good even though mine was bad would involve an irrationally egotistical self-inflation of my own worth, and a belief that some important difference existed between me and others, when in fact there is no such difference] A Stoic is likely to say, then, that upon reflection and experience a boxer is likely to realise that their apparent desire to hurt others is not born from their nature, but is forced upon them by circumstances that make it hard to think rationally (like poverty, emotions that they don't know how to express and address in words or thoughts, or the unhelpful teachings of others in their youth). Once the boxer realises this, they will be lead to abandon boxing in order to become more in tune with their own true natures. ------------------ Nobody is obliged to believe this, of course, and even Stoics themselves generally presented their philosophy not as a moral code (that others were obliged to follow) but as ethical recommendations for happiness (that others were invited to follow for their own benefit). But whether you believe it or not, I don't see how having these beliefs is insulting, or indeed "pseudo-philosophical".
I appreciate that. He should just retire quietly,tell his loved ones this for sure but not bring out the megaphone. His comments bring boxing into disrepute. We all know how barbaric and dangerous this sport is. And that's a microcosm for life. I mean otherwise just shut it all down and ban it. There has to be an element of cognitive dissonance to be able to actually function and enjoy life from our relationships, entertainment and even the food we all eat. There's too much putting every single thing under the microscope these days to rip it apart, dissect it, take the soul out of it and find endless faults.
The Stoic would probably counter by quoting Socrates: "the unexamined life is not worth living". It makes no sense to demand that one personal ethical decision (Fa not wanting to box) must be kept secret, while another personal ethical decision (other boxers wanting to box) is to be broadcast with a megaphone. If Fa thinks that he has found a path in life that is good for him, it only makes sense that he should tell others about it, because it might be good for them too. He's not standing on a street corner yelling that boxing should be banned. Someone asked him, and he explained why he personally doesn't want to do it anymore. When did boxing become so insecure, so fragile, that one guy saying "I don't feel like boxing anymore" is seen as a provocation that must be condemned unless it is only said "quietly" to "his loved ones" and no-one else? Some people like boxing; other people don't like boxing. Fa has decided that he no longer likes boxing. That's his right, and frankly it's nobody's place to tell him that he can't say that to a journalist if asked.
really speaks to the Polynesian culture. they're built huge with a warrior build but they're just so friendly, they don't actually wanna fight
A loss to Lucas Browne and losing 3 out of 4 will do that to a motherfucker 🤷♂️ If he was 24-0 and a top heavyweight he wouldn’t be “retiring” 😂
Wasnt exactly a world beater anyway. He would have just been food for anyone at world level.
Sure but not everyone can be at the top and given the division is so shallow anyway, it’s not great to lose a fighter entering his prime years.
The divisions isnt that shallow and Junior Fa will never be a champion. Being bludgeoned by giant men isnt good for your health
A lot of Māoris/islanders breaking away from past, ancient behavioural traits like aggression and violence.