What subject, for a photographer, could more dramatic and immediate than a fight? I started practicing different martial arts in high school (something that led me, at one point, to that most niche of gigs: writer for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The original no-rules, barely-legal production, mind you, not the current Vegas phenom). Anyway. The shots below are from a full-contact Karate tournament, a Jujitsu black belt test, and a Boxing title bout -- with under cards -- at Madison Square Garden. Are you ready? Let's get it on.

These pictures are from a tournament between various Tri-state Kyokushin Karate schools; I knew folks from the New York Oyama school. Kyokushin is known as a traditional, hard-ass, bareknuckle style; some folks still apprentice in the old way by living in the dojo and serving the teacher.

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The rules of the tournament: Kicks – anything but to the groin. Knees – same. Punches – anything below the chin.

Competitors performed classic one-strike board-breaking exercises before competing; in the event of a draw, match would go to whoever had broken the most.

Matches didn’t last very long. There weren’t any draws.

Straight punch to the throat. Note the feet lifted from the mat.

That’s Ivan Guerra on the left; these are outtakes from his black belt test at the Eizan Ryu Ju-jitsu school. It went on for hours. The school was founded uptown in the Carlito’s Way era; Japanese in lineage, Filipino by instruction, Puerto Rican by practice, with a practical, distinctly street-savvy Bronx influence.

No matter how hectic or exhausting things got during the test, everything snapped into focus during the live knife portion.

Friday night fights, Madison Square Garden.

Fight!