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Big Rapids former 3-sport athlete Brody Sleeper is making a career with Mixed Martial Arts.<\/p>\n
Maria Sinclair<\/p>\n
BIG RAPIDS \u2014 Brody Sleeper was a talented three-sport athlete at Big Rapids who has taken a unique path in his athletic career.<\/p>\n
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Sleeper has become heavily involved in mixed martial arts (MMA), a full-contact combat sport that combines striking and grappling techniques from various martial arts disciplines around the world.<\/p>\n
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A 2023 graduate of Big Rapids High School, Sleeper competed in football, wrestling, and baseball for the Cardinals.<\/p>\n
He played three years of college baseball, beginning at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor. As a sophomore, he transferred to a community college in Alabama.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring those two years, my focus was baseball,\u201d Sleeper said. \u201cMy arm never got back to what it was, so I decided to hang it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sleeper then enrolled at Ferris State University to pursue a degree in criminal justice.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve known Chad Coon, the head coach of mixed martial arts, my whole life,\u201d he said. \u201cI started training and getting into the cage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sleeper began his MMA journey in August 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cMixed martial arts is a little bit of everything,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have jiu-jitsu, boxing, and kickboxing \u2014 all the main martial arts thrown into one. You have to train a little bit of each every day. We do jiu-jitsu three to four times a week, and we do striking three or four times a week. It\u2019s all about finding that balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He fights for 2Piece Promotions, one of Michigan\u2019s fastest-growing MMA organizations.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRight now, I\u2019m just an amateur. I\u2019m getting my feet wet,\u201d Sleeper said. \u201cI\u2019ve only had two fights. I\u2019m slowly moving up the rankings, but we have a long way to go. I\u2019m 1-1 so far. I had a fight last November. I was winning, but I got caught in an armbar late in the third round. My most recent fight was in March, and I won by TKO in 59 seconds of the first round.\u201d<\/p>\n
MMA bouts take place inside a caged octagon with a mat in the center.<\/p>\n
Sleeper recently had a fight scheduled on a multi-fight card in Cadillac, but it was canceled.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s next is to keep grinding, keep moving forward, and keep getting better every day,\u201d Sleeper said. \u201cI don\u2019t listen to outside noise. I just keep my head down like I\u2019ve always done.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As for his future goals in the sport, Sleeper is aiming high.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to go as far as it will take me,\u201d he said. \u201cI like the freedom in it. If you put the work in, it shows. If you don\u2019t, it shows. I like the mentality of it. It\u2019s kind of me against the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sleeper noted that there are several other local MMA fighters who train with Coon MMA.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs much as it\u2019s an individual sport, your team is everything,\u201d he said. \u201cThey help you through it and are right there with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continues to work toward his criminal justice degree at Ferris State while pursuing his MMA career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Big Rapids former 3-sport athlete Brody Sleeper is making a career with Mixed Martial Arts. Maria Sinclair BIG…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,357896,357895,785,357894,357897,85],"class_list":["post-742635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-hrshare","tag-lcsshare","tag-mma","tag-pioshare","tag-sat062026","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}