Bellator 274’s Brennan Ward Realized Too Late That He Still Wanted to Fight: “I Was Already Deep in Addiction”

It has been a long time since Brennan Ward has taken part in a fight week. A long time since Ward has stepped into the cage.

1639 days will have passed between fights when Ward finally gets back to action at Bellator 274 this Saturday. What happened to Ward in the interim was a different sort of battle, one against addiction, which was superbly told by MMA Junkie’s Nolan King recently in a piece entitled Finding Brennan Ward.

Cageside Press was in attendance at Ward’s last fight, in August of 2017, when he came up short against Fernando Gonzalez. Now, over four years later, we asked Ward if, after going through so much, he had even been confident he’d fight again period.

“Of course, at the very end of it all, I wanted out of there. I didn’t want to fight anymore. I was really burnt out, I wasn’t training hard, I wasn’t doing any of the right things,” Ward admitted. At that point, Ward (14-6) didn’t feel like he deserved to be in the position he was in, he added. “So that weighed real heavily on me mentally, and I was just super checked out. And of course once I quit, retired, whatever — quit, I like to say, which is kind of what it was, backed out of a fight and just said ‘I’m over it’ — not long after that, I knew, it’s like they say ‘you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.'” By the time he realized how much he wanted to fight, it was too late. “I was already deep in addiction.”

Four years on, Fight Week at least doesn’t feel much different, Ward told us Thursday, during the Bellator 274 media day. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. My first fight with these guys [Bellator MMA] was 2012. That’s ten years ago. I’ve been doing this a long time.” Combine that with his wrestling, he noted, “and it is like riding a bike again.” Cutting weight still sucks, Ward added, but outside of that, “it feels natural. It doesn’t feel like four years to me, it really doesn’t. It does not feel like four years.”

Ward’s comeback story has been inspirational, but there’s also a fight ahead against Brandon Bell, who Ward called “a little muscle ball,” though nothing he hasn’t seen before. “I’ve fought some of the best dudes in the world. But I respect him as an opponent, I take everybody very seriously.” At the same time, Ward added that “I don’t think he can hang with me at any facet of the game. I guarantee you I’m in better shape than him, I’m probably just as strong if not stronger, I can wrestle, and I can swing. I’m going to bring you into a dog fight — that’s all I know how to do. That’s all I want to do. I don’t want to fight any other way.”

Ward prides himself on never taking a backwards step in his fights, and suggested that his opponent will have to meet him in the middle. “When you fight me, that’s what you have to do. That’s how you’re going to have to fight, unless you want to back up the whole time, and then you’re going to lose anyways. So when you fight me, you have to roll the dice. When you take a fight with me, you’re rolling the dice. If you think you can out-bang me and out-swing me and out-wrestle me, then take the fight with me. But I think I’m better at those things then a lot of guys on this Bellator roster at both 170 and 185.”

Without a doubt, Brennan Ward sounded fired up on Thursday. Chomping at the bit to get going again after a battle against addiction that he knows could have killed him. So is it one fight at a time from here on out? Or time to go on a run?

“I told myself I was going to take it one fight at a time,” Ward told us. But he’s feeling good, and knows he turned pro young. He’s coming back at 33, and believes he still has “a couple years left that I can do some damage at 170 and 185.” Now working a day job, his employer helped out, giving him the past couple of weeks off to make his final push towards his comeback fight.

“I’m going to end up making a run,” Ward stated in the end. “Because when I get older and I can’t make a run anymore, I’m going to say ‘dude you should have gone all the way when you made your comeback.’ So I’m probably going to go all the way with it.”

Watch the full Bellator 274 media scrum with Brennan Ward above. The event takes place this Saturday, February 19, 2022 at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT. More coverage from Thursday’s media day can be found below.