Chad Johnson has lost a lot this summer, and now the wide receiver is hoping that anger management courses can help him control his outbursts in the hopes gaining some of it back. His top goal: Return to the NFL.
The former NFL star said he hopes he can suppress his rage so he doesn’t have another outburst like one earlier this summer with his ex-wife, TMZ reported . Johnson and wife Evelyn Lozada got into an altercation after she allegedly discovered a receipt for condoms on him. Their argument spilled over from a restaurant to their drive home, and, once the couple arrived home, Johnson allegedly head butted his wife.
The couple split, Chad Johnson was charged with domestic battery , and this week their divorce was finalized , less than three months after they were married.
“I’m taking classes, anger management classes,” Johnson told James Brown of Insi de the NFL .. “I’m trying to find out how can I channel my anger when I’m in situations to where I would pop off? How can I defuse those situations?”
“When you get a humble Chad Johnson that has lost everything and has to work his way back up, that’s a big deal. Because you’re not getting that same individual, you’re not getting that same fun guy … I gotta prove a point. That’s the scariest thing in the world to have someone that has that drive.”
This isn’t the first time Chad Johnson has been in anger management classes. He was ordered to complete a domestic violence program after battering a former girlfriend in 2000.
To make matters worse, just days after the incident, Johnson was cut from the Miami Dolphins in an incident broadcast to the world by HBO’s reality show Hard Knocks . Johnson said he believes the release was motivated solely by his arrest and not his play.
“That was the reason … there’s no need to blow smoke up my a**,” he said.
Chad Johnson is hoping the anger management classes will pave his path back to the NFL, USA Today reported . He admitted that he let his off-the-field issues become a distraction and now has vowed to re-organize his priorities.
“First off, I lost two things that I love, honestly,” Chad Johnson said. “Football, I love. You know that. And you know the way I play the game, I enjoy it, I have fun with it, you know? And being married, being a husband, being a lover, it was an honor. You know what I mean? And I lost that. And you know that saying, ‘You never know what you have until it’s gone?’ And now I finally know what they mean.”