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If there’s one thing Jon Koppenhaver wants you to know, it’s that he doesn’t want your sympathy. Not that he isn’t deserving of it. In a story he told on an episode of the Ultimate Fighter, his father, a lifelong police officer, died when he was 12. Koppenhaver received his father’s pension.

If everything went according to plan, he would have graduated from the Citadel by now. Biology major with a 3.7 GPA and $12,000 in his savings account, his future seemed secure. But there’s very little about Koppenhaver that goes the way it should.

One day while preparing for the fall semester of his junior year, he learned from a university administrator that his credit had been frozen. Koppenhaver says his mother had spent his tuition money on drugs. With no money, he was kicked out of school

Which led to the unofficial start of his fighting career.

Koppenhaver went home to San Diego in no mood to celebrate a homecoming. He started by getting into a fight with his stepfather, who he beat to a bloody pulp. Police were called to the scene, and Koppenhaver wound up in jail. Upon his release, he started training for MMA.

After being cast on season six of The Ultimate Fighter, Koppenhaver felt his life was turning around. Two months before the show started, he fully prepared himself for the show by moving into a San Diego gym. When his stint on the show ended, he had no home. After a temporary stop at a friend’s house, he moved back into the gym, where he now sleeps in the locker room. “It’s not as bad as you think,” he chuckles. “It’s a huge gym. It was pretty civilized.”

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