The storyline running through Shane Kruchten’s adult life is almost unbelievable. As a teenager in the US Marines, he was blown up in an explosion in Iraq, returned home depressed, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and fell into alcohol and drug addiction. Picking up $700 of drugs nine years ago, he tried to kill himself before, luckily for him, the undercover cop who had sold him the drugs, broke into his home and found him flatlining. Little wonder he is in what he calls his “second life, a new lease”.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across Kruchten, 33, at a Bellator mixed martial arts event in Los Angeles. For the past 12 years, he has taken to cage fighting and was up against a rising star – Aaron Pico – in the Bellator fight league, live on network television in the United States. He was knocked out in the first round, and more than likely will never be a world champion.

Yet Kruchten’s...