Fabricio Werdum might be the interim UFC heavyweight champion now, but things weren’t always so bright when it came to his martial arts career. He wasn’t always the top-level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner that he is today and in fact it all started one day on a beach.

Werdum told MMAFighting about the time that he got beat by his girlfriend’s ex-boyfreind. The boyfriend, Marcos, was already training Jiu-Jitsu at the time, while Werdum had never stepping foot into a gym. The Ex challenged him and the girlfriend pushed him to accept it, then he got beat up pretty quickly.

“I guess he wanted to embarrass me in front of her and her entire family. So he challenged me to fight him in a jiu-jitsu match right there at the beach.”

“She told me to do it, that it would be fun, but I declined. I told her I had no idea what jiu-jitsu was, but she eventually convinced me to do it.”

After that, Werdum decided it would be best for him to get some training of his own, and the rest is history.

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