UFC heavyweight star Jairzinho Rozenstruik seems to have been destined to become an athlete. Named after the legendary Brazilian soccer player (even though his parents weren’t Brazilian), ‘Bigi Boy’ was always bigger than other boys his age. Not only was he named after a footballer, but he was also interested in sports from a young age.

The UFC star used to play football and basketball before he discovered martial arts, which would prove to be the most important part of his life. In this article, we take a look at Rozenstruik’s early life and martial arts journey.

Parents and early experience shaped Jairzinho Rozenstruik into the fighter he is today

Jairzinho Rozenstruik hails from the tiny South American country of Suriname. Born and raised in the capital city of Paramaribo, the heavyweight is the only UFC fighter from the country. His parents, as we have seen, were big soccer fans, especially of the Brazilian national team, and named him after the legendary Jair Filho, popularly known as Jairzinho, right winger of the storied 1970 World Cup-winning team.

While no other information about his parents is available, not even their names, their support and encouragement of his love for sports was crucial in his reaching the biggest stage of combat sports. ‘Big Boy’, unsurprisingly loved football growing up, having almost accidentally fallen into martial arts as a joke!

The Paramaribo native recalled that one day, while he was playing football with his friends, he saw some other kids training in the gym. As things went with the young boys, the two groups got into a fight, and ‘Bigi Boy’ was beaten up for the first time in his life, despite his size!

This beating had such a profound impact on him that the Surinamese vowed he would never get beaten up again. And he knew what he had to do to make sure that happened- start training in martial arts. And that is exactly what he did, proving himself a world-class fighter not only in one combat sport but two of the hardest martial arts in the world.

How ‘Bigi Boy’ went from Suriname to the UFC

Rozenstruik started his martial arts journey with the unforgiving and punishing sport of kickboxing at 17. Before making the transition to mixed martial arts many years later, he was a veritable kickboxing veteran, having eighty kickboxing fights under his belt, with a record of 76-8-1 with 64 of these wins coming via knockout!

In 2012, along with his kickboxing career, ‘Bigi Boy’ made his MMA debut just to dip his toes in the water. After five years, however, Rozenstruik abandoned kickboxing and leaped to become an MMA fighter full-time. Given his kickboxing pedigree and background, it was no surprise that he quickly established himself as a knockout artist.

Two years later, in February 2019, his impressive MMA performances were impressive enough to earn him a call-up to the UFC, where he has been a top-ranked heavyweight ever since. Being the only Surinamese in the world’s biggest combat sports stage has also come with some big responsibilities that ‘Bigi Boy’ understands well and is ready to shoulder.

Since there is not much of an MMA infrastructure in his native country, Rozenstruik is determined to change that and help prepare the next generation of Surinamese mixed martial artists.“In the future, I want to do a gym back home. I try to inspire fighters back home all the time. I feel like I owe it to them because I’ve been here…. so I have to pass it on to them. I owe them that and I have to do it,” Rozenstruik said in an interview earlier this year as per UFC’s official website.

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