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“I was mentally just in shambles,” Bhullar said. “I broke.”
Sitting in the waiting area of the hospital, with his younger brother in the emergency room, KB Bhullar said he was never going to fight again.
For just shy of five years, that remained true. But not forever.
Canadian prospect Bhullar is scheduled to meet former UFC fighter Matt Dwyer for the Unified MMA middleweight title at Unified MMA 38 on Friday in Edmonton. Bhullar, 27, is 7-0 as a pro and a win over Dwyer could punch his ticket to the UFC. At the very least, it’ll get him that much closer to his dream of fighting on the biggest stage in the sport.
But all of this – fighting for the Unified title, possibly fighting for the UFC one day, simply making a name for himself in MMA – came so close to being a non-reality for Bhullar.
In January 2014, Bhullar’s brother, Kenny, had his first amateur MMA fight. The bout was at a Hard Knocks Fighting event in Edmonton. At the time, Kenny was 18 and KB was 22.
Kenny lost the fight, which Bhullar was there for, via doctor’s stoppage in the first round. He suffered a broken jaw “on both sides—right through the mandible and then directly in through his teeth on the right side,” according to Bhullar.
Kenny recovered from the injury, Bhullar said, but hasn’t fought since. He now competes in jiu-jitsu as as a purple belt. Bhullar said his brother has had to deal with some “pretty serious” nerve issues in his neck and lost some sensation on one side of his face.
“For the first time in a really long time, I was forced to confront losing in MMA and the dark side of losing—seeing someone you love and care about really have to suffer,” Bhullar told Bloody Elbow. “Seeing my brother go through the six to eight months of physical therapy, recovery, multiple surgeries, and just having to deal with that. And having the dream and the love for his ability to do martial arts ruined for him during that time, it just put a real bitter taste in my mouth. I kind of had this hatred for the sport for a bit.”
Bhullar vividly remembers being in the ambulance with Kenney, who was being shot up with adrenaline and morphine to deal with the pain. Bhullar held Kenney in his arms, covered in his brother’s blood.
That moment helped Bhullar come to terms with the fact that MMA is a dangerous sport. Before his brother broke his jaw, Bhullar said he used to “almost have a playful attitude towards fighting and what it was.” Seeing someone he loved get hurt as a result of fighting, especially so early in his career, put things into perspective for him.
“After that experience, I saw MMA for what it was—the most brutal, violent sport in the world,” Bhullar said.
And on that night Bhullar knew that brutal, violent sport wasn’t for him.
“I was mentally just in shambles. I broke.”
For the next few years, Bhullar did what he could to not think about MMA. He never stopped training, but fighting again was not going to happen. He got an office job; he had moved on to a new chapter in his life, and he wanted it to stay that way.
But Bhullar quickly realized the office job – for lack of a better word – sucked. He constantly watched fights on YouTube at his desk. He constantly thought about the gym, and always looked forward to leaving so he could go to the gym.
“Sometimes, you have to realize what you hate before you even know what you love, and that’s ultimately what happened,” Bhullar said. “I had to go through a period of being like, ‘I hate this. This is so awful. I don’t want to do this,’ to realize that I love fighting, I love MMA. MMA is me, it’s what I am. I’ll be able to give back more to the world and to the public as a fighter and as a teacher of martial arts than I ever will living this miserable existence in this office. It’s not me. I would be doing a disservice to my humanity by not pursuing [MMA] with all of my energy.”
Like so many fighters who retire, Bhullar couldn’t stay away. Five years after the night he sat in the hospital with his brother and he told himself he would never fight again, Bhullar returned.
Bhullar defeated Corey Atkinson via first-round submission at Unified MMA 35 in December 2018. He has picked up two more wins since his comeback fight and hasn’t looked back since.
And, he revealed, his brother was one of the people who urged him to end his hiatus and return to the cage.
“Two and a half years after the injury, I was really drunk in India with my brother, and we started arguing about it,” Bhullar said. “He was like, ‘You gave up on your dreams because of me.’ And I had nothing to say back to him. I just blanked. I tried to ignore him, and then he started yelling at me, like, ‘You gave up. Why the f-ck did you give up? You had so much to give to this.’
“I realized this is all I know and this is really what I love to do. I had a long time to piece together why I do it—once I got that reason back, the decision was easy.”
As far as why it took him a total of five years to realize he was meant for MMA, not an office job or anything else, Bhullar isn’t exactly sure.
But he knows those five years were necessary.
“I guess it goes to show I take my time with things,” Bhullar laughed. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way, because I think taking that time to digest it and really say, ‘OK, this is what I want to do with myself, this is what I want to dedicate myself to fully,’ I think it was a decision worth taking five years for.”