The Journey So Far…

Jared had been obese his entire life. Right from childhood he struggled with an ever increasing weight problem. Loving video games, movies, comics and art but despising athletics.

In his last year of high school in 2006 he began going to the gym, and after months of attending he began weighing himself. His “starting” weight was 310Lbs.

With only a few months left before graduating, Jared discovered the television reality show “The Ultimate Fighter” and was instantly hooked. With no concrete plans for the future outside of the prospect of university, Jared decided he was going to forgo post-secondary education in favour of becoming a professional MMA fighter.

He began training full time under the guidance of friends, but quickly realized he needed a more educated approach. Finding that personal training costs were far too high for him to afford, he began studying on his own, learning the basics of fitness.

In early 2007 he received his first personal training certification and continued his own fitness journey. On May 1st, 2007 Jared began training with SIAM Muay Thai at around 270lbs. On his very first day in the gym, Jared made it clear and known that he was there to be a fighter.

Again treating his training as a full time job, he quickly excelled in Muay Thai and joined the advanced program after just 2 months of training. And in August of 2007 Jared began Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with Infight BJJ in addition to Muay Thai.

In late 2008 Jared had lost enough weight to qualify for an abdominoplasty. He had excess skin removed from hip to hip across his midsection and had his abdominal wall partially reconstructed (which had become stretched out beyond non-surgical repair from a lifetime of obesity). After a month and a half or so of recovery, Jared was back kickboxing. Shortly after returning to the gym he began coaching the beginner class, this began his coaching career which would last for 15 years.

In April of 2009 Jared travelled with his team to Bangkok, Thailand to spend a month training at a Muay Thai camp - Fairtex Bangplee.

With his stomach fully repaired, and full training underway, Jared began preparing for his first amateur fight - a modified Muay Thai fight - which took place in early 2010.

Jared won his debut, and went on to have a successful amateur career, losing only once by way of contentious decision.

Due to the competition scene at the time, events were few and far between. And in Jared’s home province - Saskatchewan - professional fights were illegal, and so there were very few shows being put on. Most cards are split between professional and amateur to draw in local audiences as well as cut costs for promoters. And because of this every single fight Jared has had (both professional and amateur) has been outside his home province. This problem still exists today (although foolishly it has been flipped. Professional is now legalized with amateurs being unable to compete on the cards).

In 2014 Jared had reconstructive shoulder surgery which delayed his return to competition. During his shoulder recovery Jared joined Ascendant Martial Arts (then under the same name and umbrella as QCMA). This was a big step forward as it was the first true Mixed Martial Arts gym in his hometown.

Up until this time Mixed Martial Arts (or MMA as it’s known) was still relatively new and was just starting to break into the mainstream. As such, previous MMA training was done across multiple gyms. One gym for BJJ, one gym for Muay Thai, one gym for strength and conditioning, etc. Ascendant was the first gym where MMA was the flagship focus.

Jared was now able to train MMA fulltime instead of splitting resources. And after taking time to train full MMA and improve his wrestling, Jared began preparing for his professional career. He had his first two professional fights in 2017.

After his last victory in 2017, Jared went through an extremely unfortunate and frustrating streak of 5 fight cancellations where he prepared, was on weight and ready to compete. This wasted the remainder of 2017 and the majority of 2018.

An Instagram post from June 2018

After competing in July, Jared took a few months to recover from some minor jaw injuries sustained in the fight. And during his recovery period, he unfortunately suffered a non-training related injury. He slipped on a patch of ice resulting in a neck injury that made it almost impossible to grapple (wrestling and jiu-jitsu). Jared attributes this as the most challenging injury of his career. It took him out of competition for the entire year of 2019.

Near the end of the year, after months of rehab and use of the device the Iron Neck Jared was recovered and beginning to search for opponents for his return.

In early 2020, fight preparation was underway when the unfortunate Covid lockdowns began. All competition, training and coaching (Jared’s main source of income) were put on hiatus.

Covid was an absolute nightmare for so many people worldwide, and the martial arts community was devastated especially bad. Not only were there no events taking place, but martial artists couldn’t even train due to the close proximity of the sports. Many gyms shut down permanently and many athletes completely walked away from their competitive careers.

During this hiatus, Jared began screenwriting while staying in shape for an anticipated return to competition. But as Covid and the resulting mandates continued to cripple the industry, Jared began working more towards a career in film and further from a competitive career.

By the time the final Covid mandate in 2022 was lifted nearly the entire competition team had moved on. Jared continued to train and coach, but was now 33 years old and nowhere near peak competition shape.

Jared starred in his first short film “Multi(Un)Talented” in November of 2022. And with a burgeoning career as an actor, writer, and producer, Jared retired from coaching on December 23rd, 2022.

Jared will never walk away from martial arts, though. He now trains at Legacy MMA & Fitness.