UFC’s Chris Weidman: I was extremely bullied, hospitalized as child
Chris Weidman made headlines this year when he beat Anderson Silva and became the UFC middleweight champion but in a new interview filmed by Bobby Razak the fighter revealed that he may have overcome his biggest challenges long ago, as a child.
"I was severely bullied," Weidman said.
"I didn't really even think about it as bullying up until a year or two ago when I gave an anti bullying speech, and I realized holy crap I was really badly bullied."
The wrestler's brother, a neighborhood tough, was often the one bullying Weidman.
"I grew up in a decently tough neighborhood," he explained.
"My brother definitely had a history of beating me up and abusing me...I grew up getting bullied and fighting a lot. My brother was probably one of the toughest kids from my neighborhood and he didn't make it easy on me. He made sure I was getting beat up as much as possible growing up. If he wasn't beating me up, he was making his friends beat me up. He threw a 10 pound weight on my head because I wouldn't get him a cookie. [It] split plit my forehead open pretty good."
Despite the trauma, Weidman says he was grateful for the adversity because it helped make him the man he is now.
"I think any type of setback you have, any tough time you've got, getting through it is what makes you who you are. It makes you a tougher person," he said.
"I think whatever you've been through in your life makes you a tougher person. I'm very grateful for the background I have, every tough situation I've been through because it's made me who I am."
Check out the rest of the interview, including Weidman's story on how he broke his collarbone in the woods only to have his brother line up friends to punch him afterwards and then walk home, as well as about the day his brother brought other kids who wanted to beat Chris up, into their home, locked him in his room and beat him up together, in the video above. There's also descriptions of other horrible crap Weidman's brother did.
The kid sounds like he was a monster.
Weidman rematches Anderson Silva this Saturday at UFC 168 when he defends his middleweight belt for the first time.
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