Bellator 114's Brennan Ward says fighting won't define who he is, title or not

Brennan Ward likes to do many things. Chief among them are skating, surfing and snowboarding. Oh, and swearing. Ward can curse with the best of ‘em.

He also likes to fight, of course. But one thing the Bellator MMA middleweight title challenge doesn’t plan on doing is changing his life outside the cage, no matter how things go down on Friday when he fights for the belt.

Bellator Season 9 tournament winner Ward (9-1 MMA, 5-1 BMMA) fights middleweight champion Alexander Shlemenko (49-7 MMA, 10-1 BMMA) in the main event of Bellator 114, which takes place at Maverik Center in West Valley, Utah. The main card airs on Spike TV following prelims on Spike.com.

Even though Ward picked up a cool $100,000 over his three tournament wins – stoppages of Justin Torrey, Joe Pacheco and Mikkel Parlo in the fall – he’s staying the same dude.

“I haven’t changed anything,” he told MMAjunkie. “I still do everything I’ve always done. I train the same. I chill with my boys. I still skate and surf all the time and go snowboarding. I’m just chillin’. I’m doing what got me here. I’m never going to change my lifestyle for fighting. F–k that. I am who I am. Fighting’s just fighting, bro. We’re here for such a short time and fighting is just what I do. The sport has to adapt to me because I’m not going to adapt to it.”

Ward’s mentality about staying grounded and making the sport come to him rather than changing to fit some idealized version of a fighter is rooted in the reality, it seems, of knowing his fighting career won’t go on forever.

And Ward is just 25 and 10 fights into his career.

“If you change your life for MMA and it’s your whole world, what happens when it’s over? Now who are you? You’re washed up and it’s over for you,” he said. “You’re f–king 40 years old and you were a fighter – or it’s never who you were, it’s just what you did. I mean, good for you – but that’s not me.”

So Ward’s a fighter, sure, but he won’t be defined by it. That would lead to a presumption that he might not care, but that would be dead wrong.

In fact, Ward said he cares enough to feel a great big bunch of pressure heading into his title fight with Shlemenko. It’s pressure knowing that if he doesn’t come out on top, he’ll have to go through the tournament process all over again. And it’s pretty obvious that’s not something he’s particularly interested in.

Hell yeah, I feel pressure. There’s always pressure,” Ward said. “When you go into a fight and don’t feel any pressure, you lose. This isn’t a win/win, or, ‘Hey, it’s OK if you lose but put up a good fight’ situation. I have to win. I have to win. If I lose, I’m back to the tournament. F–k that s–t. There’s big-time pressure on me for this fight.”

That pressure comes against a fighter who has more than five times his experience – even though Shlemenko is only four years older than him.

Still, Ward was watching his opponent before he even started taking on MMA in a full-time capacity as a competitor, which came in 2012.

“I’ve been a big fan of Alexander Shlemenko forever,” he said. “I remember in 2009 when I was still in college – I was in Kansas and like 20 years old – I told all my friends, ‘Yo, you gotta watch this guy fight on TV! He’s f–king nasty!’ It’s definitely kind of crazy. I mean, I’ve been watching this guy since way before I knew we were going to fight.”

“But I’m not scared of him at all. I mean absolutely no disrespect to Shlemenko. He’s f–king tough. He’s tough as s–t. I’m tough as s–t. This’ll be fun! In the end, we have to put on nasty fights and bang it the f–k out. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I could get knocked out? Who the f–k cares? You wake up and fight again another day. There’s no reason to be scared. There’s no reason to ever be scared of anybody. It’s just a fight. It’s not that big of a deal.”

So Ward plans on fighting another day no matter what happens on Friday night. His brash attitude hasn’t made him a ton of friends, it seems, in the online world. But he doesn’t care.

Ward believes he’ll have a title soon around his waist, and that will shut people up.

“F–k yeah, I’m going to be the next Bellator middleweight champion. You know I am,” he said. “And everyone talking s–t about me on the Internet, hating on me and calling me a white-trash punk, they’ll see. And then they’ll have to eat their f–king words after this. It’s going to be beautiful.”

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