Fight For The Forgotten
Justin knows what it feels like to be wronged. Bullied as a child, he dreamed of becoming a UFC fighter and used his anger as fuel to propel his dream into reality. But the pain from his childhood didn’t dissipate. Instead, Justin fell into a spiral of depression and addiction, leading him on a path toward destruction. Kicked out of his training community and with no other place to go, Justin agreed to attend a men’s retreat, and it was there he found God.
As Justin began piecing his life back together, he joined several international mission trips that opened his eyes and his heart to a world filled with suffering deep in the jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There he met the Mbuti Pygmy tribe, a group of people persecuted by neighboring tribes and forced into slavery. His encounter with the Pygmy tribe left him wondering who was there to help them and in that moment Justin stepped out of the ring and into a fight for the forgotten.
From cage fighter to freedom fighter, Justin’s story is a deeply personal memoir with a bigger message about a quest, justice, and the amazing things that can happen when we relinquish our lives to God.
Justin Wren is a Christian motivational speaker, missionary, social activist, and mixed martial artist. Since 2010 Justin has shared his testimony of love and redemption in prisons, schools, churches, drug rehabilitation centers, universities, and youth groups worldwide. In 2009 Justin was a quarter-finalist on Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter during its tenth season. He debuted in the UFC that year and his professional record stands at 13-2. Justin launched Fight for the Forgotten, in conjunction with Shalom University, to raise funds for a program to liberate 1,000 persecuted Mbuti Pygmy slaves and relocate them to self-sustainable land of their own in the eastern Congo region.