When retired MMA fighter Tom DeBlass was in high school, he tried to call his father before one of his track meets. He never picked up, and DeBlass soon learned the bad news.
“My mother said, ‘You can’t call him. He’s in the hospital. He’s alive but he overdosed,'” DeBlass, 39, told The Post. This wasn’t unfamiliar territory for the Bayville, NJ native. As a toddler, he saw his drug- and alcohol-addicted father on the kitchen floor so inebriated that they called an ambulance. “I was distraught,” he recalled.
In spite of his father’s condition, the then-17-year-old track star broke the school record in the long jump that day.
“I think I was angry. I knew how to use my anger for fire. I didn’t go punching lockers, but when it was time to do something, I would go out and do it,” he said.
This scenario would play out over and over for DeBlass: He’d channel his emotional pain into physical feats — to very successful ends. He would go on to become a world-class Brazilian jiu jitsu grappler, a sought-after martial arts instructor and middleweight fighter in both the UFC and Bellator.
“The energy has to go somewhere, and for me it went into sports,” he writes in his new memoir, “How You Bear it: Triumph and Resilience in Life.”
In the tome, DeBlass wrestles with his generational family demons, laying out his complicated but loving relationship with his father, also named Tom, and his rise in the world of mixed martial arts.
He also reveals disturbing details about his youth: At 7, he was molested by an older boy. And at 20, he wanted to commit suicide and checked himself into a mental health facility.
“I’m a rough dude. I’ve had friends who grew up with the same kind of childhood [with addict parents]. Some ended up overdosing and dying. I had a best friend who was murdered,” he said. “I got pretty famous in my sport, so I figured my purpose was to help others.”
DeBlass, who is an only child, writes about growing up in gritty blue-collar Ocean County, where neighborhood scrapes were normal. His father — who owned a barbershop until he was injured in a car accident and unable to work — was known as a legendary street fighter who was able to crush bricks with his bare hands while intoxicated. His paternal grandfather was an alcoholic who was so strong he could bend railroad ties.
“The men in my family were a different breed,” he said. “I’m the weakest one and I’m not weak at all.”
His selfless mother Debra, who worked in a hospital, held the family together.
And while booze and drugs would sometimes turn his father into an absentee parent, he never witnessed his father’s consumption. He only felt the aftermath, when his father would disappear, or, on a few occasions, get physical with his son.
“He would never drink in front of me. I never saw him take a sip. He would do it privately. I didn’t find out about the narcotics until I was in high school,” said the 6-foot grappler.
What he did know: “My father was prescribed methadone for the last 20 years.”
A few times a week, DeBlass would drive his father, whom time and addiction had softened, to the clinic. During those trips, his father would pepper him with questions trying to fill any memory gap forged by booze and narcotics. DeBlass, now a father of two himself, recorded those conversations and used them as a lens to tell his own story.
One particularly dark recollection: At 7, he was molested by a 13-year-old boy in the boy’s bedroom.
“A child, who was very likely himself being abused, abused another child,” he wrote. “It’s hard to say what level of culpability, or even understanding, he had of what he was doing. But he still did it, and I was never the same,” he wrote, adding that it made him retreat emotionally and it later affected his ability to get close to women romantically. DeBlass said he forgives his perpetrator, however, “I would not be as forgiving if it were to happen to my child.”
Athletics became his release. In high school, coaches tried to get him to wrestle, but ironically he thrived in non-contact sport: track and field.
But DeBlass, who describes himself as a “pain junkie,” pushed himself to the limits. “I needed to feel some kind of physical pain. If someone is going to do 20 push ups, I want to do 100 until my entire body is burning,” he said.
Eventually, his mental anguish took a toll. The summer before leaving for Monmouth University, where he had a track scholarship, he started having suicidal thoughts.
DeBlass went to a hardware store, bought rope and drove around the woods assessing which trees could hold his weight. But his mind floated to his mother.
“I think for the first time about her finding my body or getting a phone call. Several possible futures for her appear to me, none of them good ones. Anything I do to hurt my father, her pain will be greater. My father can retreat into drugs and alcohol. My mother will not. She will shoulder the pain, keep working, and keep existing,” he wrote.
That realization kept him from going through with it. But when he was in college, where he studied special and elementary education, he hit rock bottom.
“I was a popular guy. I had lots of friends. When the lights turned out at night, I felt terrible. I had thoughts about not being here. I just didn’t want to be here anymore,” he said.
He drove home and told his mother he needed help. DeBlass, 20 years old at the time, checked into a facility, which was filled with severely disturbed patients.
“I saw what real problems were, and I knew it wasn’t a place for me,” he said. A doctor prescribed him Zoloft and he left after a few days. The medication, he said, changed his life. So did his next move. He started training in mixed martial arts.
“Jiu jitsu saved my life. Without it, I don’t know where I’d be,” said DeBlass.
While he was still in school, he enrolled in an academy. After about five months, he took his first bout and was clobbered in front of his childhood friends who were in the crowd. With a wounded ego, he returned to the gym the next week and had a renewed motivation. A training partner introduced him to jiu jitsu legend Ricardo Almeida, who took DeBlass under his wing. Almeida also introduced him to Renzo Gracie, who has trained MMA legends like Frankie Edgar, Chris Weidman and Georges St-Pierre, putting him in the center of the burgeoning sport.
“I started training and never took a week off,” he recalled.
DeBlass, who taught special education for a few years after graduating in 2004, was seduced by the discipline. He quit teaching and in 2006 opened up Ocean County Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Forked River, NJ.
Under Almeida, he would earn his black belt and be propelled to the professional ranks.
“My father taught me to be strong, but Ricardo taught me to be successful. Everything he did, I listened and I mimicked.”
After suffering numerous injuries, DeBlass retired from the octagon in 2014 with a 9-and-2 record. In the grappling world, he was a three-time North American trials winner at the ADCC, the elite international jiu jitsu competition. In 2015, he became a jiu jitsu world championship in Masters One Black Belt Division.
He has since shifted his focus to teaching jiu jitsu and raising his daughter Isabelle, 10, and son Thomas, 6. He’s also become a resource for others suffering with mental health issues.
“There’s so many people who message me saying they want to take their own lives. First of all, get professional help… There are better days ahead. If I didn’t live another day, I would never have experienced these beautiful things and become a father.”
He has also broken his family’s cycle of addiction. DeBlass abstained from alcohol until he was 27. “I despised it,” he explained. But he was curious. “I wanted to see for myself if I would be the man my father was. I don’t fear much, but I always worried I’d act recklessly. I said let’s start slow. I became happy. And I only drink socially.”
In March 2021 tragedy struck the family. DeBlass was hospitalized with COVID-19. His father, who was already battle-worn from substance abuse, was also infected. As he was being released, his father was being admitted. The elder DeBlass never recovered.
“My father was in hospice for 15 days. He didn’t want to give up. He was my best friend. Especially as I got older, we talked every day. He was an amazing grandfather.”
In addition to martial arts, DeBlass is a devoted practitioner of forgiveness.
“I wish he could have read this book. No matter how many times I told him I loved him, it never [sunk in]. I don’t resent him. I hated to see him sad or in pain. I wish he was easier on himself,” said Deblass.
“Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am. I experienced suffering and pain but I always experienced extreme love.”
