Matt Brown lets out a big sigh. He's been through this before and, frankly, he'd rather be talking about pretty much anything else. Yet dutifully – and clinically – Brown recounts the story of a period of his life he'd much rather forget.

He's in the UFC now, one of the best fighters in the world. He faces Mike Swick on Saturday in a welterweight match on the main card of UFC on Fox 5 at the Key Arena in Seattle, a bout the cognoscenti awaits with great interest.

Swick and Brown are each aggressive stand-up fighters and it's no coincidence their bout will open the Fox portion of the broadcast. UFC president Dana White wants to set the tone for what will come and there's little better way than relying on two guys who almost always deliver.

After delivering a series of entertaining performances, this might be the time Brown finally wins one of the UFC's fight-night bonuses. After each card, White chooses a Fight of the Night, a Knockout of the Night and a Submission of the Night.

Brown, despite his many edge-of-the-seat battles, hasn't won a fight-night bonus yet.

"Never have," he says. "Can you believe that?"

More hard to believe, though, is that Brown is around to talk about it. Before he turned professional as a fighter in 2005, Matt Brown was nearly dead.









Things always seemed to come easy to Matt Brown. He grew up in Ohio and went to Greeneview High School in Jamestown, where he did well in his classes despite not trying that hard.

His father owned a machine shop and Matt worked in it as a machinist.

"I'd worked there since I was a little kid," he said. "By the time I was 15, I was doing things that people with four years of college education weren't able to do."

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No matter whether it was work, school or play, Brown seemed to have a knack for doing well despite minimal effort.

But rather than pushing him to succeed at the highest levels, his ability had a strange affect on him. He was bored and unfulfilled by life.

Nothing was much of a challenge for him, and he responded by seeking out something that would be exciting.

"I just kind of took things for granted and I had this feeling that I was invincible," Brown said. "I never took a book home once from school and never did homework and I [still got good grades]. It just came easy to me. It wasn't hard and it took no effort.

"Basically, it all kind of correlated into that. I didn't understand what I was doing. I was very naive. I didn't respect those around me and, on top of that, I had this feeling that no matter what, I would be all right. … I kind of had the [attitude] that I'm smart enough to do anything and deal with anything."

Brown began to sell acid, and a friend soon convinced him to use some of the proceeds to try heroin.

He was afraid of needles, he said, but decided to give it a try after some prodding. His friend injected him.

Brown said he "didn't feel like I normally felt," and went home, where a female friend who was sober became concerned about him. She took his blood pressure, but her fears eased when she saw the reading.

Little did she know, though, how fearful she should have been. Her friend, the future UFC star, was about to begin a fight for his life.

"She took out the blood pressure monitor and I remember her checking my blood pressure," Brown said. "She said, 'Ah, you're fine,' and that's one of the last things I remember."

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