The following is a guest post by Chad Kurle, the North Dakota State Athletic Commissioner.
This week isn’t shaping up to be any better than the last. I can’t seem to get any better. This back injury has seriously limited my range of motion. MMA has definitely suffered. I am only shadow boxing and lightly hitting the pads at this point. At Crossfit I can’t do the workout of the day, I can’t run, I can’t even get on the floor to play with my son. You know it isn’t good when you try to get up and your 4 year old says, “Daddy, why do you say ugggghhhhhh.”
I feel weak, physically and mentally. I am not sleeping much, taking way too many pain killers and washing it down with too much alcohol. I tend to get a little crazy around this time of the year anyway.
Two years ago my wife and I were planning the birth of our second child, a daughter–Sophia Mary. One day, about 28 weeks into the pregnancy, everything changed. For some reason, unknown to us or the doctors, she just stopped moving. A few days later we buried her. To this day I still can’t write about it without tearing up. We are about 3 weeks away from the anniversary of her passing. It was almost a year later that the first UGGP idea came up. At that time I really felt like I needed to fight. I needed pain that I could understand instead of the constant ache I was feeling. For whatever reason the fight that year didn’t work out, but the idea of this fight has always been in the back of my mind. So here I am, injured, looking ahead at what ends up being the most difficult month of the year for me, knowing that I want to fight, but seemingly unable to make myself do the things I need to do to get there.
