LAS VEGAS - Long before Dustin Hazelett started fighting for a living, martial arts kept him alive.
Growing up in eastern Kentucky, Hazelett was bullied for years when he switched from a private Christian school to public school in sixth grade.
"I was younger for the grade I was in, I was small, weak and I had ADD (attention deficit disorder) and mild case of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)," the 23-year-old welterweight explained. "So I mean I was an easy target. Going through the culture shock coming from a school where you get paddled for saying poop to having kids curse out your teachers, because somehow I got put in the delinquent class. It was odd, it was like a whole another world for me. So I was a very easy target and that’s the kind of people bullies go for."
Today Hazelett (14-4) is a prickly black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And, thanks to an opening created by an injury to Carlos Condit, the six-foot-one, 170-pounder finds himself in the co-main event of UFC 108 on Saturday night against British banger Paul (Semtex) Daley.
Nicknamed McLovin from the nerdy character in the film Superbad, Hazelett is not your average fighter.
He got into martial arts "more as self-preservation."
"I just hated going to school because I’d always get bullied, get my head shoved in a toilet and stuff. It was just a horrible experience and so I began debating suicide. But then I realized that I could change my situation and I believe that everybody can. If you’re going through a hard time, you always have the potential to change it. You just have to work hard and seek it out and have faith. And that’s what I did. I started doing martial arts and my life got so much better. I stopped getting bullied, I had more self-confidence.
"Martial arts is a lot more to me than fighting and winning fights. I fight because I love to fight and I love the competition, but martial arts is a lot more than that to me."
He started taking traditional jiu-jitsu at 13 or 14 but gave it up after a couple of months because it didn’t seem practical. He had seen the UFC on TV and knew the brand of Brazilian jiu-jiutsu was different. So he started training by himelf in his garage, lifting weights and following instructional Muay Thai tapes.
At the same time, he had a growth spurt. The bullying stopped almost immediately. He was a sophomore in high school at the time.
"Being from the country, not a lot of people do martial arts there so everybody, they had no clue what I was doing or how good I was at it, because I wasn’t good at the time, but they just assumed that I was good so they backed off."
When he turned 16 and got his driver’s licence, he started training at Jorge Gurgel’s gym and started fighting as an amateur at 16 and 17 with a fake ID.
A jiu-jitsu specialist, the jug-eared Hazelett is 5-2 in the UFC and has won submission of the night bonus three times. One came for his spectacular finish of Josh Burkman in June 2008. Hazelett tripped Burkman at the fence and both went flying through the air. When they hit the ground, Burkman snaked a leg around Burkman’s neck like a tentacle and applied the armbar.
"He pulls off some amazing, crazy, crazy submissions," said UFC president Dana White.
Hazelett displays little ego. He knows jiu-jitsu is his bread and butter and he is not about to get caught standing and swinging with a knockout artist like Daley.
"I’m not be any means going to try to make this a brawl. I’m not the strongest, guy, I’m not the fastest guy, I got where I am through hard work and intelligence. I always try to go with the path of least resistance which almost every fight for me has been getting it to the ground. I don’t think this really is going to be any different."
Hazelett says he is looking forward to meeting Daley "because I like fighting opponents who have the ability to defeat me. If I go into a fight and I think there’s no possible way I can lose this fight, it’s not fun for me. .. That’s what I enjoy about this sport, knowing that I have to be on my best or I’m going to lose.
But he is also relishing a chance to get back into the cage after a lengthy layoff. Following his submission win over Tamdan McCrory at UFC 91 in November 2008, he tore his anterior cruciate ligament and had to undergo surgery in February. He was out for five months.
His knee injury has made him stronger, he insists, by making him appreciate what he does.
"I’m a lot more mentally strong, I’m a lot hungrier to fight than I have been. I think that it gave me time to really do a lot of soul-searching and thinking and stuff. I’m back to now where I just fight because I love fighting. This is what I want to do, it made me very grateful and appreciative of being able to compete."
His comeback fight, at UFC 106 in November, fell apart the day before the weigh-in when opponent Karo (The Heat) Parisyan unexpectedly pulled out.
"Obviously I was very disappointed but I have faith in God’s plan and I believe that if you have faith, even through bad experience, positive things will come out of it and here I am," he said with a laugh. "I don’t think I need to say any more, here I am with this much more publicized fight that, as Dana says, if I win this, this could propel me higher in the division than beating Karo would have."
Hazelett now makes his home in Westchester, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati, where he continues to train with Gurgel and former middleweight champion Rich Franklin.
It’s a measure of the man that he paused before accepting this fight because he worried about putting his training partners and coaches through a training camp through the holidays.
Being in the co-main event has brought him into the spotlight, not something he seeks.
Back home, he likes to read - with psychology a favourite topic - or play video games.
"I’m not like a real big people person, I kind of like to just stay home and hang out with a couple of close friends or my fiance."
He’s more interested in the challenge of the fight than its audience.
"Obviously it’s more exposure and stuff for me, which is better for my career, but this isn’t why I do it. To me, it doesn’t matter how many people are watching. I fight because I love fighting. If there’s millions of people watching, that’s awesome. If there’s three people, I’ll still fight the same. And I’ll still be just as happy."
Hazelett will speak out about martial arts, saying some do not treat the sport with the respect it deserves.
"You need to be humble and learn the true essence of martial arts."
And speaking from painful experience, he recommends martial arts to any victim of bullying.
"Seek out martial arts, and persevere," he said when asked what advice he would give to someone who is being bullied. "It helped me out a lot and you know I think getting bullied gave me the tools to be successful. It was a horrible situation, I wish nobody would have to go through what I went through but it made me a lot mentally stronger, it gave me drive to be successful and it definitely gave me a sense of perseverance. It instilled that in me.
" I think to be successful in this sport, you have to have perseverance, to be able to survive bad situations and rebound from bad situations. When you get used to struggling and working for things your whole life then it becomes a little easier when you have to do that for your line of work. It’s something you’re accustomed to."
