Matt Brown is proud of his old-school roots when it comes to mixed martial arts.
Long before he was tied for the record for most knockouts in UFC welterweight history, the 17-year veteran was just a guy who liked to fight. There’s no better example than how Brown made his professional MMA debut in 2005, which came just three months after he suffered a broken jaw in training.
” Interesting enough, a newspaper article [about it],” Brown was revealed in The Fighter. The Writer . “This was in Lancaster, there’s a newspaper guy coming to interview all the fighters, it was a group of fighters out there, Aaron Crowell, Higher Power Promotions if you remember this locally. He’s coming to interview everybody, and after I got my jaw broken, I didn’t know it was broken.
“My lips were bleeding heavily and the newspaper reported that Matt Brown was spitting blood in a cup while he did the interview. .”
According to Brown, the pain from his broken jaw was severe, but not enough to make him want to pay out of pocket to get proper medical treatment. In fact, the 41-year-old Ohio native didn’t even bother to get an x-ray done right away, but he eventually discovered that his jaw was fractured in two separate places.
“I just didn’t have a mouthpiece and I was sparring,” Brown said. “Hit the jaw, broke it in two spots. It’s why my jaw is so strong now. This makes it stronger than ever before. Never got it wired or anything.
” I didn’t realize it was damaged. I was like, ‘Well, it hurts.’ I got an x-ray a week or two later. It was like What do I do ?
Brown said that he still felt the effects of the fractured jaw even after returning to work. He was just hitting heavy bags as the vibrations resonated throughout his body.
Despite the fact that he never actually received medical care for the broken jaw, much less took time off from the gym, Brown ended up booking his professional debut five weeks later.
“[My jaw] still hurt,” Brown stated. I had a boil-and-bite mouthpiece. I didn’t have no professional mouthpiece so I wasn’t protecting it very well.
” I remember thinking that the [I was fighting], man was a Golden Gloves fighter. A really good one. It was a great idea. “I am going to bring this motherf down,” I thought. If he strikes me in my jaw it will hurt very badly
The event took place in Lancaster, Ohio — a city that sits just over 30 miles southeast of Columbus — with Brown taking on Ricardo Martinez.
While there was obviously a lot happening on the night he made his pro debut, Brown will never forget the look of the cage, which gave him an idea about his strategy for the fight.
” The cage must have been made from dog kennel panels as it had a straight bar across its middle,” Brown explained. “About belly button height, so I thought I’m just going to run him straight into that bar and that’s exactly what I did.
” I just did a second leg. It was a great double. As soon as he hit the bar, he [screamed]. It worked .”
Brown cannot confirm that the cage was used as a double dog kennel but he does recall that the link fence of the cage didn’t have any protective coating, like that which makes up UFC’s octagon.
Regular Chain-Link Fencing is only raw metal, with jagged edges — which Brown noticed right away.
“This was chain link from f****** Home Depot,” Brown said. It’s like the cheaper stuff. It was just my desire to be in control of my environment. It was like, well, there is a bar here, but the fence itself seems a bit rough. It worked out. It worked out.”
The end result was Brown finishing the fight with a first-round neck crank submission to move to 1-0 in his career.
He eventually got to the UFC less than three years later, but Brown will never forget those early days in his career when fighting was just about fighting and not much else mattered.
“We’re young kids and we just wanted to fight,” Brown said. It’s a completely different world now, thanks to social media and all the potential of this sport. In my time, people just wanted to fight.
“Ohio had more shows than any other state, with shows every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There are men that will fight for all three. We were just a bunch of young, savage dumbasses. We had an ****** great time and that made us the .”
people we are today.
Source: https://www.mmafighting.com/2022/12/23/23523154/matt-brown-reveals-time-fought-broken-jaw-cage-made-out-of-a-dog-kennel-and-fencing-from-home-depot?rand=96749
