Childhood & Early Life
Shane Carwin was born in Colorado, United States of America on 4th January 1975 into a middle class family. He never saw his parents together ever since he was a baby and was raised by a single mother along with two of his brothers. The mother, as a result, became a key pillar of strength for Shane, and he learned the value of hardships and sacrifices early in his life through her.
The family saw financial hiccups from time to time and like every middle class mother, Shane’s mother wanted all her boys to study hard, get respectable jobs and start families of their own. But Shane wanted something big from his life and started wrestling at the age of 6, and overtime, he developed his inclination towards the life of athleticism.
He was a great football player in the school and played other sports equally well, along with wrestling. He just fell a little short of appearing in the super
bowl, an all American football tournament. But MMA remained his first love and he earned several titles on the school and college level.
But he had to go to college to finish his education, adhering to his mother’s wishes and he got enrolled into the Colorado School of Mines, where he studied engineering and also worked as a wrestling coach. Later, he went on doing bachelor’s degree in environmental technology from Western State college. Although he never did let his MMA training hamper his studies, he couldn’t keep himself away from training for hours in the gym.
For further preparation for bigger MMA events, particularly UFC, Shane got himself acquainted with Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Thai Muay, two martial arts popular with the best of MMA fighters. Along with working as an engineer, Shane kept fighting in different MMA events and won honours at NCAA, a fairly popular MMA promotion.
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Career
His first pro MMA fight was scheduled at WIC 17, in October 2005 and his opponent Carlton Jones couldn’t handle the raining punches on him and submitted in the first round. This was a grand arrival for Shane Carwin to the MMA space and in his second fight at the Extreme Wars 2; Shane won in the first round as well via submission.
In the next six matches for several big and small promotions, Shane came ahead as an unstoppable force and won all of his fights in the first round and in most of those six fights, his solid punches were too much for his opponents to handle, and he won by either TKO or submission.
Right before his arrival into the UFC ring, Shane knocked out Sherman Pendergarst in the first round at ROF 31 in December 2007, winning ROF Heavyweight Championship. But he had to submit the title soon enough as he was embarking on a larger career phase after he got signed on by the UFC.
By then, his infamous punches had become well known to his potential UFC opponents and fans of the tournament, and they witnessed a testimony of it in the very first fight Shane fought at UFC. In the May 2008 match, his opponent Christian Wellisch couldn’t understand what hit him and in the 44th second of the first round, one hard punch from Shane knocked him out. This led Shane to become an overnight sensation, and the career looked extremely bright for him at the UFC ring.
On October 18th 2008, his next opponent Neil Wain came prepared to tackle Shane, but Shane didn’t let him make a comeback and within two minutes in the first round, Neil received blow after blow and one solid punch knocked him out.
The next opponent was not to be taken lightly; he was the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Gabriel Gonzaga, who also happened to be a former number one contender for the Heavyweight championship. The fight was scheduled to take place in March 2009 and at first, Gabriel seemed to have an upper hand over Shane. But right at one minute mark, Shane made a surprising comeback and 9 seconds later, Gabriel received a solid right handed hook, which knocked him out and the fight was owned by Shane.
Riding high on the biggest victory of his career, the next match came with a chance to win the UFC Heavyweight Championship against Brock Lesnar but somehow, Lesnar wasn’t well and the match, after getting delayed for many months, was eventually cancelled.
Frank Mir was the interim champion by then and it would have been unfair to steal Shane’s chance of winning the title. The fight was set and took place in March 2010, and turned out to be the harshest and longest fight of Shane’s career by then. Mir wasn’t weak, and he surprised Shane many times during the fight, but Shane knew that one right punch at the right time was enough to take the championship home. They both fought valiantly and at the first chance Shane got, he punched Mir to a knockout and became the interim UFC Heavyweight Champion.
Brock Lesnar made a comeback and naturally, was given a chance to win the title back, and Shane got an opportunity to make himself the undisputed Heavyweight champion. Lesnar was a beast in the ring and very few fighters had the skills to handle him in a fight, and Shane had to face the man on July 3rd 2010. This turned out to be the first pro MMA loss for Shane as he succumbed in the second round to an arm
triangle choke, thus losing the championship.
In a June 2011 match, he lost in the third round against Junior des Santos, in the first fight of his career where anonymous decision was used to declare a winner. Suffering from a back injury, it was stated to be the reason for his declining performance and after lots of speculations and a further knee injury, Shane bid his farewell to the sport in May 2013.
Carwin announced his comeback in July 2016, not with UFC, but with Rizin Fighting Federation and his first match was slated to take place in December 2016, but was cancelled.
Personal Life
Shane Carwin lives in his hometown of Colorado and got married to Lani Carwin after dating her for years and had a son named Kamden. The couple welcomed a daughter, Alexis, in 2010, but everything between the lovely couple didn’t seem right, and the marriage ended in a divorce.
Shane works as an engineer and manages his time between the job and MMA fights and training.
