funny looking back on it all now
Asian gang in sixthform (school after highschool) wanted to fight me because one of them told the rest I said something racist to him, I didn't, we fell out and he didn't like that they still liked me so told them I said something to turn them on me.
At the time I was real small for my age and was walking around at like 5'4 - 130lbs and knew I'd get fucked up so I went home scared and tried to find a way of defending myself. Youtube'd fighting and self defence videos and found UFC/MMA videos and was fascinated by the way these guys, even the small guys, could fight so incredibly well standing, taking guys down and on the ground and I had never seen anything like it before, it blew my mind.
Did a little boxing when I was a kid but started working on it again, not in a gym but just working on coordination, timing and footwork. I knew at my size I wouldn't last long standing and I had seen these guys ground and pound other guys and I didn't want that to happen so I started focusing on the ground game of MMA guys, all the UFC fighters did BJJ and talked about how amazing it was, so I looked into it some more and knew i had to learn it even though i was sceptical about how good it really was, luckily a new gym had opened in town and was doing BJJ so I went down and signed up
Because I was scared and needed to get as good as possible as quickly as possible I started training there everyday, id literally take the long routes to class and home and would be on the mats first and last out, taking the fundamentals, advanced and open mat sessions. I also started using the school's weight gym everyday after school had finished to try and bulk up, including doing daily body weight sessions and although it was really really hard at first the motivation was there, the fear of getting beaten up is a powerful motivator.
I really took to BJJ and I progressed really quickly getting my blue after 8 months of training 6 days a week but I had also bulked up to 160+lbs and had grown to 5'7-5'8+ and was STRONG, i wore training hoodies a lot which masked my body shape but people were commenting on how big i was getting.
In the 8 months i had done pretty well at avoiding them all, they would hang out in the same spots so i knew where to avoid, but one day (after a year) i was in the school's gym and I walked into the changing room to grab my bag but as I did I bumped into them all, we didn't say anything but they all avoided eye contact and acted like i wasn't there, I quickly left and went back into the gym, as I was sitting on the bench the door was open and as they were walking down the corridor I heard one of them say 'did you see how big his arms are? they're massive!'
no longer avoided them after that, if anything they went out of their way to avoid me, fun additional bonus was one of the 'big' guys came down to do a BJJ class a few months later and was laughed out of the gym when he got annoyed and said he would 'bang us all out'