Songfacts®:

• Triumph was the Canadian power trio of singer/guitarist Rik Emmett, bass player Mike Levine, and singer/drummer Gil Moore. "Fight The Good Fight" is a band composition with lyrics by Emmett, who was inspired by his aunt, who was dying of cancer. "What can you tell someone who is facing the last challenge of this life?" he said in a Songfacts interview. "Or - what will you tell yourself? If you're in a rock band called Triumph, what message can you share with the people listening to a song on the radio, or standing on their chairs, out in an arena? Everyone gets to decide what their own 'good' fight will be, but everyone should be encouraged to discover it, and do it."
• The themes of this song are resilience and persistence. Emmett says it's about "finding a calling when things get bleak."
• The title is a biblical reference culled from 2 Timothy: 4:7 when St. Paul says, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
  
  Paul wrote the letter while he was in a Roman prison for two years at a time when Christians were being persecuted under the reign of Emperor Nero. Knowing he'd most likely die for his faith, he was comforted by the fact that he "fought the good fight." (He was executed not long after, probably around 67 AD.)
• Triumph was at the peak of their powers around this time - the Allied Forces album was a million-seller in America and also very popular in their native Canada. They didn't adapt well to the MTV era (there was no video for this song) and fell off in the mid-'80s. They fractured in 1989, with Emmett launching a successful solo career.