The invention is directed to a process for making a tissue repair implant having a porous sponge-like structure to repair bone, cartilage, or soft tissue defects by producing a connective tissue homogenate from one or more connective tissues; mixing the connective tissue homogenate with a carrier solution to produce a connective tissue carrier; optionally mixing one or more natural or synthetic bone fragements with said connective tissue carrier to produce a tissue repair mixture; freezing or freeze-drying the tissue repair mixture to produce a porous sponge-like structure and create a three-dimensional framework to entrap the natural or synthetic bone fragments, treating the frozen or freeze-dried porous sponge-like structure with one or more treatment solutions to produce a stabilized porous sponge-like structure. A crudely fragmented connective tissue from one or more connective tissues is optionally mixed with the tissue repair mixture before freezing or freeze-drying. The tissue repair implant having a porous sponge-like structure is optionally combined with one or more bioactive supplements or one or more agents that have bioactive supplement binding site(s) to increase the affinity of growth factors, differentiation factor, cytokines, or anti-inflammatory agents to the tissue repair implant. The invention is further directed toward applying such tissue repair implant for tissue repair.