Ben Kunzle’s life took a dramatic turn during what was supposed to be his final hard training session before the IBJJF World Championships.

The rising BJJ star was executing what seemed like a routine takedown, when disaster struck:

I had a single leg on me and I stiff-armed him, kicked my leg out…
I shot the fireman carry and picked him up.

I’m on my feet, I have him over my shoulder, and I slip on a puddle of sweat.

The fall resulted in his training partner landing on his neck – causing a C5-C6 spinal injury that left him quadriplegic:

I heard a crack and I screamed because I was scared.

It wasn’t even necessarily painful at the moment, it was more of just fear.

When Kunzle first woke up after surgery, he struggled to grasp the severity of his condition:

As a fighter, you’re always injured.
I was in the mindset that, dude, I’ll be fine in three weeks.

But the doctors delivered sobering news, telling him he had a 50% chance of not recovering at all:

I yelled at my doctor and I yelled at all the nurses and I was like: “You guys know nothing. You don’t know who I am.”

The full weight of his situation hit him about three weeks later:

I went outside with my mom and watched my first sunset after the injury, and I broke down.

I was like: “Man, I’m 23 years old. This is the best I’ve ever done, this is as far as I’ve come, and my life is over.”

It was his former Jiu-Jitsu coach, Roberto Cyborg Abreu, who helped shift his perspective:

What is Jiu-Jitsu? Jiu-Jitsu is a series of problems, and you’re just always problem-solving.

And so what is this? It’s a problem – it’s just got to problem solve.

Today, Kunzle has transformed his devastating injury into a mission to help others. He founded the Push On Foundation, dedicated to getting people with spinal cord injuries back into sports: