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Dreams and Dedication: Justin Scoggins talks ‘Karate college,’ path to the Octagon
- Updated: July 27, 2016
Justin Scoggins was born to fight. He wasn’t fit for a desk job, nor any other career path besides competing inside the Octagon. He dreamed of becoming a fighter — not just any fighter, but more specifically, a world champion — ever since he was a teenager.
Even today, it is all about combat sports for Scoggins. He was a high school drop-out and chose against obtaining a college degree. Fighting was his only chance of success.
“As soon as I turned 18-years-old and I had already dropped out of high school, everybody knew [MMA] was the one route for me,” Scoggins told BloodyElbow.com’s The MMA Circus. “My family knew it, and all my close friends knew it. Everybody started pushing for me to get as much experience as I could. It’s like, ‘Okay, this kid is not going to college, we need to send this kid to karate college.’
“It’s a big, big journey for me because this is all I’ve ever had. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’ve never desired for a family, I’ve never desired for anything but to be the best in the world at what I do. And I have nothing that holds me back. My only distraction is my dog — he’s with me right now. I have my dog with me all the time — we run together and everything. I’m like nobody else in this game because I’m completely in this game, to better the view of martial arts. I don’t care about anything else. I want to make martial arts look good. That’s all I care about.”
Scoggins’ parents were not on board with the idea of him dropping out of school and not getting a college degree. It definitely took some convincing.
“My parents definitely tried to force me to stay in school and not be a drop-out and things like that,” he said. “They pushed me really hard. I was always grounded because I was skipping school and just getting into sh-t I shouldn’t have been getting into. I was at, not a rebellious stage, but you came to those crossroads where your parents had to be your parents and they were like, ‘Look, you …
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