Bellator 149 Related:
Not Forgotten: Justin Wren eyes unfinished business with Kimbo Slice, London TED talk in March.
2/12/2016
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Josh Connor
As
Justin “The Big Pygmy” Wren (11-2) makes his walk down to the Bellator 149 cage February 19th in Houston to fight
Juan Torres (3-3), he will take one last sip of bottled water before he enters the cage. While the action may go unappreciated by many of the thousands of American fans in attendance, Justin knows the privilege of consuming clean water. Its just one of the many life lessons he has learned over the last five years serving the
Mbuti Pygmy people deep in the jungles of the
Congo as a Christian missionary.
For Justin, the dramatic life change came many months after his stint on the
Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights. Despite demonstrating the skills necessary to compete with many cast-mates who would go on to have stellar UFC careers (
Roy Nelson, Matt Mitrione, etc), Justin left the sport of MMA behind to find God’s true purpose for his life and attempt to fill a deep void in his soul.
“I was a 21 or 22 year old, basically a depressed drug addict. I snuck pills into the [
Ultimate Fighter] house. I got drunk like crazy in the house. I was a shy, quiet kid but I basically drank myself to sleep.”
Struggling with addiction and depression, Justin found purpose in serving the Pygmy people who historically have suffered indescribable suffering, impoverishment, cannibalization, and enslavement at the hands of rival groups in the Congo. The breaking point for Justin came as he held a young, dying boy in his arms named
Andibo who ultimately was refused medical care and subsequently died of a parasite related illness resulting from unclean drinking water.
From that moment forward, Justin dedicating himself to creating a way in which he could break the chain of suffering for his new found Pygmy family. What ultimately resulted was born out of his own suffering and faith:
Fight for the Forgotten, an idea rooted in loving the unloved Pygmy people by providing them clean water wells and teaching them farming practices.
"My personal faith has played a huge part in it. It just keeps me really grounded and really at peace whenever I shouldn’t be. I had malaria; it almost killed me. I lost 33 pounds in five days. I was vomiting red and green, which is blood and bile. Whenever I finally got diagnosed with malaria after four times missing it, they said I was hours away from being in a coma. The strange thing for me was I had peace the entire time. I counted it a blessing to suffer like they suffer and not just have it as a statistic that comes in one ear and out the other or to just see it an be able to empathize with it. Through my faith, I have experienced everything over in the Congo."
"Whenever our team of 18 people saw I got sick with malaria, half of them said he will never come back, and this whole project is done. Whenever I came back and said ‘let’s get going’ and I didn’t take a trip back to the U.S., I just took 3 or 4 weeks to recover in Congo eating rice and beans and potatoes, they knew we are not giving up. This is a fight. Sometimes in fights, you get knocked down and you have to get back up. For me, my faith kept me there."
As with many good men, behind them is an even better woman providing the love and support needed to achieve the unthinkable:
Emily, Justin’s wife.
"We met right after our first trip; our first conversation was about Fight for the Forgotten the title. She thought it sounded good. Her first camping trip was in the Congo sleeping under the twigs and leaves, literally on the dirt having roaches crawl across her on her first nice. She has been really supportive. There has been tough times, but something I see as an answered prayer was she was saying ‘Justin, I know you are chosen for this; you belong here. This is your life path. You have your own family here, your own name. They call you the Man Who Loves Us.’ Three days later the Chief [and two other tribal members] sat her down and said we want to give you a name. Her name [they gave her] translates to ‘Chosen, Belongs Here’. If that is not an answer to prayer, I don’t know what is."
For Fight for the Forgotten, Justin views himself as the spark plug for the initiative, whereas the heavy lifting is done by his 18 Congo staff which serve as the engine of the operation in creating new water wells for the Pygmy people. After this fight, Justin intends to go back to the Congo in March in an attempt to fire them back up and hopefully bring with him additional monies donated from the exposure he receives for his fight at Bellator 149. With the average cost to create a new well deep in the Congo running around
$2,500, Justin knows his performance on the pre-lim card must deliver if he hopes to have his fight spliced into the main card broadcast on
SPIKE which will garner millions of viewers to his cause:
"A lot of times, [Bellator] will take the most exciting prelim [fight], and throw that on the main card. So, if I go in there and do my job and get on [Juan Torres] and fight like I used to fight then I think I have a really good shot at getting on [Spike] and getting in front of the millions of people and telling people about the Pygmies."
With a serious training camp now under his belt working with both
Team Takedownand
Grudge Training Center, Justin can feel shades of his old fighting form returning piece by piece. Just who he calls for next if victorious inside the cage next Friday may surprise you.
"I’m making my way back, and there is definitely some contenders out there and maybe I need another fight or two. But, that doesn’t mean it needs to be against a Josh Burns or Juan Torres. Maybe it needs to be against a
Kimbo Slice or
Dada [5000] or someone that has a name so that there is a lot of eyeballs on it so we can do a whole lot of good."
"I felt like Kimbo escaped me in
EliteXC. I know my name was in the hat for that. Past management, coaches, and training partners know my name was in the hat. And then, in the
Ultimate Fighter I got excited. The guys on my team know that ultimately maybe producers, and
Dana [White], and other people got Roy [Nelson] in there but I was the first one that was supposed to test the waters with Kimbo. So, I feel we are both in Bellator. Maybe he doesn’t want to take that kind of fight; maybe he just wants to fight Ken Shamrock and Dada [5000] and be done with it. But, if he wants to fight me I would absolutely love that fight."
Bellator fans in the UK can look to attend a
TEDx [an independently organized TED event] Talk given by Justin Wren
March 5th in
London at
Warwick University. Originally slated to fight at Bellator 151 March 4th, Justin moved the fight three weeks earlier so he could take part in this
TED Talk experience.
In the end, Justin Wren looks to have a big year in 2016 for both Fight for the Forgotten and his Bellator heavyweight aspirations.
"Now that my life is right, I think with time… Right now, I would be a fool to say I am not building myself back to the fighter that I was before I left, so I know I am doing that. Once I am there, I will be able to hopefully springboard just like those [TUF] guys have. I’m not coming back as a publicity stunt or to just shine a light on Fight for the Forgotten, although that is so much motivation and a passion of mine. It is not to just be a flash in the pan. I’d love to be a real contender."
