Cameron Conaway picks Nick Delpopolo’s brain on judo,

friendship and leading a balanced life.

Judo became an Olympic sport for men in the 1964 Games in Tokyo. While the US has yet to capture Olympic gold, buzz is growing about what twenty-two year old Nick Delpopolo might do this July in London.

The story begins with rejection. Nick’s adoptive parents originally wanted to adopt a child in America, but because Nick’s father Dominick was in his mid-fifties and his mother Joyce was in her forties they were deemed unfit to raise a child. As our system rejected them, they tried another. In 1991, they found 21-month old Nick (born Petra Perovic) in a small dilapidated orphanage in Niksic, Montenegro. Dirt floors and wall-to-wall cribs filled with the howls of hungry babies, one of which a few years later would be on the mats in New Jersey with Yoshisada “Yone” Yonezuka, the coach who produced Olympic bronze medalist Mike Swain.

As the countdown on Nick’s website shows, he is 150 days away from competing in the Olympics. I interrupted his two-a-day training regimen to chat with him about his training, personal setbacks, thoughts on mixed martial arts and what it means to be a good man. Let’s jump right in.

Click here to read the full interview on The Good Men Project.