UFC fighter Daniel Rodriguez recently opened up to former middleweight champion Michael Bisping about his troubled past and how it led him to MMA. The UFC fighter lived a life of crime, frequently getting arrested by the police but he eventually grew wary of that way of life and decided to use his elsewhere!
The welterweight fighter recently appeared on the Believe You Me podcast hosted by Michael Bisping on YouTube, where he spoke about his struggles with the police and how he got out of it all thanks to MMA.
“And really what helped me change is, I got tired of it man. I got tired of going to jail and coming back…I’d have to reset, I’d have to restart my life, I lost everything, my job, my car, everything. And I got tired of that, I got tired of the cycle.”
Rodriguez then spoke about how in a city like Los Angeles, it was really hard for him to get out of that cycle. The UFC fighter was part of a gang and could not see a way out.
That’s when he found MMA and turned his life around completely. Now he is a welterweight fighter in the UFC with bouts against the likes of Kelvin Gastelum and Ian Garry, talk about a full 360.
While most UFC fighters do come from disadvantaged backgrounds, a lifetime of crime isn’t what makes them tough. Someone like former UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira grew up in the favelas of Brazil and picked up his skills down there. Even to this day, with his money and fame, he continues to live in the same neighborhood, teaching kids MMA so that they stay off the street.
But as difficult as Oliveira’s life was, Rodriguez’s struggles were often public and they resulted in being brought up in the jail system off Los Angeles County.
From a life of crime…
Daniel Rodriguez knows he is not the typical UFC fighter who began training in MMA or combat sports at an early age and made their way up in the combat sports world. He had no intention of using his talent for violence inside the octagon.
Mostly because he never thought of it as a chance, a difficult thing to do when one spends most of their time being part of the prison industrial complex of the United States of America.
Life in LA is not as rosy as Hollywood makes it seem! Taking to Bisping, Rodriguez further revealed details of his life saying,
“I grew up in the jail system, in the jail system of LA, Los Angeles County. I’ve been all over the juvenile system”
Having joined a gang very early on as a teenager, Rodriguez’s life had seen very few chances outside a life of crime.
This saw him serve time in juvenile corrections facilities and he once even spent 8 months in prison out of a year-long sentence. Fortunately, MMA came along and things have been different ever since!
