Martial arts is taking a turn to a Wild West ethos, with fighters challenging each other with fists and smartphones. Jake Shields, former Strikeforce middleweight champ and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter, was standing in line at a bank when a man noticed his ears. Shields, who has been wrestling since the age of 9, has cauliflower ears, gnarled and misshapen like badly beaten clay. “He asks me if I do martial arts and I tell him I do and he … starts wondering if I could take his sensei,” Shields recalls. Even though Shields is laughing at this point in recounting the encounter, he’s a professional fighter, so he takes fighting seriously, especially when there’s a challenge. “I’ll beat your sensei’s ass,” Shields told the man. Currently pimping his act in the Professional Fighters League, Shields cooked up a plan he wanted to call a jiu jitsu challenge, in which he would show up at schools and if he could beat the head coach, or sensei, all of the students would leave with him, because what would be the point in staying? Though he never followed through on it, Wild West challenges like Shields’ are catching on in the fight sphere. | 