When Matt Brown steps into the cage against Pete Sell at UFC 96, it will be a homecoming of varied sorts. Having grown up in the state of Ohio and lived in Columbus at one time is just one example. Deeper still are the personal triumphs Brown has made outside the cage in his home state. Riding the tumultuous wave of the party life at an early age almost took “The Immortal” away from his potential life as a professional gladiator.
“All the way through my freshman year in high school I did every sport you can imagine. I was really good at basketball and wrestling and baseball, football, track, every sport. Actually in high school I started getting away from sports, started getting into a lot of drugs and alcohol, partying. Up until my sophomore year in high school, I did a lot of athletic stuff and then pretty much stopped right after that. You know I’d do it in the streets and stuff, play street ball and fight in the streets but I pretty much stopped competitively at that point.”
It is the quintessential fork in the road presented during adolescence - the point where one can veer to the right and continue the path towards collegiate scholarships for athletic prowess or abandon those dreams in exchange for the other “sporting” life. Matt Brown chose the latter.
“I just kind of lost motivation for it while I was in high school; there’s a lot of temptations when you’re in high school and I was just kind of immature I guess. When you’re a little kid you’re like ‘after school I can go get drunk and party and hang out with girls or I can go sweat with a bunch of dudes.’”
You know what Brown’s choice was at that point. So with college in the rear view mirror and the party life in full swing, Brown still found the time to explore the new underground phenomenon known as the Toughman contest. The seeds that led him to MMA soon took root.
“When I was about 20-21 years old, we used to go to these non-commissioned or non-sanctioned fights and we’d get drunk and enter into the fight or whatever, sometimes win, sometimes lose. There were a bunch of those shows. We’d do Toughman-type stuff and we’d always be fighting in a backyard and stuff. We’d always had an interest in fighting.”
As the interest grew and the party life still hung like a constant albatross, Brown began to seek out a platform for self-repair. Through his original love, sports, and this new incarnation of it, at the time to him simply called fighting, Brown began to pick up the pieces and he entered a period of rejuvenation.
“I really wanted to pursue (MMA). At the time my life was kind of down in the dumps from drinking so much and partying so much and I went through a lot of negative times in and out of jail and stupid (expletive); all that comes with that lifestyle. So it was a choice - I’m not going to work in factories and work construction my whole life to support (expletive) drug habits when there’s something worth a damn. And from all the non-sanctioned shows and stuff it was something I really loved and it was something that I thought I was extremely good at. I was like, ‘man I love this and I’d really love to see what I can do with this,’ so I quit everything. I stopped everything negative in my life and just busted my ass and said I’m going to do this 100%.”
The road to recovery is different for everyone. Some need the consoling of others in Abuser’s Anonymous meetings or daily professional monitoring like rehabilitation houses. However, Matt Brown’s recovery took a more internal turn.
“I didn’t have to go to rehab or none of that stupid stuff. I don’t necessarily believe in that kind of stuff; I mean I’ve been to rehab a hundred times, with court sentencing making you go there. But the whole thing about being able to quit drugs is having a reason to get away from them and having some hope in your life; its kind of hard to explain, but having goals and ambitions, when you have something more to look forward to, it’s easy to get away from that stuff and that’s what MMA did for me.”
With his toughest foe to date coming in a matter of days in the form of Pete Sell, Matt Brown must channel ‘The Immortal’ again to overcome this challenge. With a bright future steady on the horizon, ‘The Immortal’ does what immortals do: think legacy.
“More than anything, I think the best legacy ever is one like Wanderlei Silva’s. Obviously I want to be champion, everybody wants to be the champion, and I want to be a legend, but I want to be known as the dude that was out there to fight every single fight, every minute of every round. Wanderlei Silva’s the perfect example. It’s like he can lose thirty fights in a row and people are still going to pay to see his ass. People still love him because he brings it. You know it’s a crazy fight when you see a Wanderlei fight, you know somebody’s getting knocked out. That’s exactly what I look forward to. Wanderlei has always been a huge inspiration for me with his mentality and his aggressiveness; it’s always been what I loved. He would be the perfect example of the type of legacy that I want. “
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