UFC: ‘King of Kung Fu’ Muslim Salikhov says Covid-19 struggles ‘woke me up’, and now he’s on different level
- Dagestani faces fellow veteran Francisco Trinaldo at UFC Vegas 28 with an eye on a title run – and a return to fight in China
- ‘Now I’m in the best shape of my life,’ says Salikhov after shaking off long-term Covid-19 symptoms
It takes a lot to stop Muslim Salikhov, as a record of being arguably the most successful martial artist to emerge from China’s domestic fight circuits might suggest.
So when chest pain hit the 36-year-old welterweight in December, and he found himself hardly able to move, Salikhov knew something might be seriously wrong.
“One morning I woke up and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move,” says the Dagestani. “All I could do was sit in one position and focus on breathing, and on the pain in my chest. One whole day I sat like that.
“I had been sick with corona in September, it wasn’t too bad. But I started to train again too early. You know as a fighter you want to train every day and to train as hard as you can. But then the chest pains came and the doctors found I had a blood clot, and it could have been dangerous.”
The “King of Kung Fu” had of course battled through injuries across two decades of combat that saw him emerge as the first Westerner to be named the “King of Sanda” – as well as claiming multiple world titles – in the Chinese style of kick-boxing, before a move to MMA and to the UFC. But Salikhov had never felt anything quite like this.