Long before Matt Brown was getting celebrated by a UFC tribute video for his retirement, the one-time The Ultimate Fighter alum spent much of his youth getting into trouble.

Struggles with drug addiction and multiple stints behind bars dotted Brown’s life before he finally cleaned up his act and became the professional fighter who set the record for most knockouts in UFC welterweight history. During a recent Q&A on social media, Brown mentioned one particular incident from his time in jail that could have easily ended his life.

Brown detailed the full ordeal on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. According to him, a desire to show he was the alpha male in jail nearly backfired in tragic fashion.

“I got sentenced to six months in the Green County jail and it was a brand new jail,” Brown explained. “I had never been in a jail like this before. There’s 60 prisoners or whatever you want to call them to a pod. That’s a lot of motherf*ckers in a single pod. Because I got sentenced to six months, it was the first two or three days, I got on the kitchen squad.

“One of the things I was wanting to do was prove to the whole jail, like, let everybody know straight away, they’re not going to be f*cking with me. I wanted to prove myself right away.”