John Howard is one of the best fighters in New England and has been for a long time. I have interacted with him on a large number of occasions and never got so much as a hint that anything was neurologically amiss.
But as detailed in a remarkable story by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting, Howard, 33, was taking a neurological exam in the context of combat sports, and the examining physician picked up a pattern in stories about his youth. The MD sent Doomsday to a specialist.
Howard, after fighting for 13 years, was diagnosed as clinically autistic.
“Now a lot of stuff in my life makes sense,” said Howard to Al-Shatti. “Now I’m thinking about my life, it makes sense why I do certain things. Even to this day.”
“Growing up, I was always in Special Education classes. I always struggled with learning disabilities. But back in the day, when I was coming up in school, we didn’t have autism, ADHD, all these things that we know about now. We didn’t have the science to understand it. So if you were any kind of handicapped, or your thoughts were flawed, you were put in Special Education automatically. I went my whole childhood being in Special Education class, basically thinking that I was slow and stupid.
“It was the hardest, freakin’ scariest thing. I was getting teased every day. People would try to beat me up. It was terrible. I was being called retard. ‘How come you’re in the retarded class? You can’t talk. You’re stupid.’”
“It was bad. When you were a special needs kid, they don’t talk about it now, but there was a lot of stuff they did to these kids that they got away with, because think about it — they’re special needs. All they have to say is, ‘listen, he’s special needs. I’m doing this because I know what I’m doing.’ There was some serious abuse up in those classes. It was hard to be abused, and to tell someone you were being abused, and no one believed you because you were labeled as a Special Education kid.”
“My mother just kept pushing me. Her thing was, this is what she taught me: nothing is impossible. Stuff is improbable, but not impossible. If you have to try a million times, a billion times, eventually you’re going to get it right once. And then when you get it right once, you just keep striving for that. That’s it.
“So my personal goals were to just keep doing it until you get it right. You’re going to fail. People don’t want to do things because they’re scared of failure. You can fail, but keep trying. Keep trying and trying and trying something, and eventually, even if you’re in my situation — I was being called retarded, all of this stuff — you’ll eventually get it right.”
“It’s not something I’m happy about or want to talk about, but it’s something that I’ve grown to deal with, and I can deal with. And I’m okay with it. I’m personally okay with it. It doesn’t bother me.”
“It’s a technical term, because that’s what people label it as. I don’t consider myself disabled. I consider myself, if anything, advantaged. My disability, if that’s what you want to call it, is mine. They label autism as a disability. I label autism as an advantage, because once you beat that advantage, what’s going to stop you now?”
John Howard makes his promotional debut at WSoF 31 vs. Michael Arrant on Friday June 17, at Foxwoods Resort Casino, Mashantucket, Connecticut.
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