Reared for the Cage

ranpa

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- The martial arts are a family affair for Brent Weedman. Born in Louisville, Ky., his father was a police officer for more than 30 years, and, as the recruiting coordinator in charge of training prospective officers, physical contact and fighting were part of the job.

“He was really into fighting,” Weedman tells Sherdog.com. “My father did full-contact Japanese karate, judo -- things like that.”

Naturally, as the son of a martial arts-inclined father, Weedman began his martial arts training at a young age. Pushed into the sport at age 4, he soon discovered an aptitude for martial arts.

“I just grew up doing [martial arts],” he says. “I started formal training at 4. I started formal judo at 8. I spent most of my childhood doing competitive judo. Martial arts have always been my thing.”

Weedman, like many of his peers, followed a natural progression into mixed martial arts. After training muay Thai, kickboxing and Brazillian jiu-jitsu, he began to fight professionally on the Midwestern MMA circuit.

“I never stopped training,” Weedman says. “I was always the martial artist. If you win enough, someone will offer you to fight.”

Backed by an excellent record, Weedman signed with Bellator Fighting Championships in 2010. Fighting Strikeforce veteran Rudy Bears in his hometown of Kansas City at Bellator 16, he entered his promotional debut as the underdog. Questions about his health dogged him.

“I was coming off a seven-month period where I couldn’t fight,” Weedman says. “It was a freak thing. I had a blood clot in my knee. It was, like, ‘Well, maybe you’ll never fight again, and, also, it could kill you.’ The biggest worries were pulmonary embolism and the clot going into my brain and [that] I could die.”

Receiving the contract soon after coming back from the injury, Weedman was thrown into the fire immediately. In less than a round, he had announced his arrival in Bellator, as he knocked out the favored Bears from back mount.

“I got the Bellator contract right after coming back [from injury], and I was worried about that,” Weedman says. “I wanted to fight a few times to get the rust off. I fought Rudy Bears, who is not an easy fight, in his hometown. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to lose to him, and I won. I had his back and I had one arm trapped. The round was about to end, and I knew I wasn’t going to get the submission. He kept grabbing my wrist. He reached up, [and] I hit him.”