The early days of the sport of mixed martial arts were far from the professional spectacle we have today. UFC veteran Matt Brown recalls fighting at local events in cages made from dog kennels and wire from Home Depot, and an infamous incident that he believes strengthened his jaw.
“Funny enough, there’s a newspaper article. 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.
Matt Brown Shares Early MMA Days of Fighting in Cage Made From “Dog Kennel”
My mouth was bleeding a lot and in the newspaper article it talked about, ‘This guy named Matt Brown is spitting blood into a cup as he’s doing the interview with me.’ It made for a pretty good article.” Brown continued, explaining how he sustained the injury.
“I just didn’t have a mouthpiece and I was sparring,” Brown said. “Hit the jaw, broke it in two spots. I think it’s part of why I have such a strong jaw now. It repairs stronger than it was before. Never got it wired or anything.
“I didn’t know it was broken. I was like, ‘Well, it hurts.’ I got an x-ray a week or two later. I didn’t have insurance or anything so it’s like, what do you do?
[My jaw] definitely still hurt. I had a boil and bite mouthpiece. I didn’t have no professional mouthpiece so I wasn’t protecting it very well.
I remember going in thinking the guy [I was fighting], he was a Golden Gloves boxer. A really good one. I remember I wanted to show that my Muay Thai would outdo his boxing. I was like, ‘I’m just going to take this motherf***** down. If he hits me in the jaw, it’s going to hurt really bad.’”
Brown also described the cage he was fighting in, a hastily assembled affair. The cage used by the UFC has a protective coating on the metal, but early regional fights often used unfinished raw metal, complete with edges and points.
“The cage, it must have been made out of dog kennel panels because it had a bar running straight across the middle. 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 double leg, a blast double, ran his back as hard as I could into that bar and it was an easy fight from there. As soon as he hit the bar, he [screamed]. Pretty sure that it worked.
This was chain link from f****** Home Depot. Like the cheap stuff. I just wanted to use my surroundings. I was like well, there’s a bar there, the fence itself is a little bit rough. I’m going to try to use this to my advantage. It worked out.”
