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Disabled Army Vet Ronald Mann: “With Jiu-Jitsu, I’m a world champion.”

Disabled Army Vet Ronald Mann: “With Jiu-Jitsu, I’m a world champion.”

 

 

For Ronald Mann life was quite traumatic. He is an army veteran who lost a part of his left leg in a motorcycle accident in 1995.

He told fox 5 :“Thirty days after the accident, I had a gun my head,” he said. “And just before I pulled the trigger, I decided I was not going to quit. If I was going to die, I was going to die fighting.”

Mann has kept on fighting since then with a relentless spirit.

“I just kind of had to find my own way and I went back into martial arts as way of recovery,” he explained.

Mann said he found his path through Jiu-Jitsu. But getting a chance to take part in the sport with a missing limb wasn’t easy.

Mann recently traveled to Abu Dhabi to be a part of the World Para Jiu-Jitsu Festival. For this occasion he took off his prosthetic leg but came out on top with a gold medal.

You adapt the art to your body,” he said. “There are advantages. You can’t ankle lock me. I don’t have an ankle on that side. There are disadvantages. I can’t block the guard attacks from that side. I’m not able to sweep from that side.”

After his devastating accident over two decades ago, Mann is grateful and thriving.

“Without this, I don’t know where I would have ended up,” he said. “With Jiu-Jitsu, I’m a world champion.”