Andre Fili’s first knockout in over 4 years ought to have been the story of his combat week.
In all probability, he’ll bear in mind UFC 296 for what occurred within the days main as much as it.
On Saturday, Fili picked up a spectacular first-round TKO of Lucas Almeida to return to the win column and maintain his UFC document above the .500 mark. The 14-year veteran entered the competition with a heavy coronary heart as he needed to put down his beloved canine Harley a day earlier than flying to Las Vegas to compete.
Fili recounted the story throughout an look on The MMA Hour.
“It was really tough,” Fili stated. “I didn’t develop up with pets, I didn’t actually develop up with animals. It wasn’t actually a factor we did, we simply didn’t have pets. So I received this canine eight years in the past, and he grew to become my finest buddy. I used to be mentally ready for him to get old, I perceive he’s eight years old, I understood he wasn’t young. I believed he had a number of extra years left. I used to be capable of wrap my head across the concept of him getting older and him passing away; I knew that was an inevitability.
“What I wasn’t prepared for was him just being gone one day. Dogs, they love you so much, and they’re always in the moment, they’re always happy, they’re always sharing the moment, so they don’t show a lot of pain. Obviously, they can’t speak to you and articulate what they’re going through, so I think he had a tumor that had been growing for probably a long time, but it wasn’t something that I was aware of.”
Fili remembers going to mattress final Sunday and waking up Monday to search out Harley wasn’t shifting and was struggling to breathe. It was apparent that one thing was flawed, and the timing couldn’t be worse with Fili and his staff set to fly out Tuesday.
The fighter hoped that it could merely be a matter of paying for a remedy that might carry Harley again to well being, however after they went to the vet, they acquired a grave analysis.
“So I take him to the vet, I’m expecting to give him some antibiotics or some expensive bulls***, and he’ll feel better,” Fili stated. “Literally, when the physician got here again into the room, I may see in her face that it was not that. I requested her, I simply instantly stated, ‘It’s unhealthy, huh?’ She shook her head and stated, ‘Yeah, he has a tumor that’s grown very aggressively in his spleen, and it’s inflicting inside bleeding, and he has blood loss and that’s why he has low power.’ She mainly referred us to a surgeon—thoughts you, that is Monday, we depart for combat week Tuesday—it’s 3:30 in the course of the day, I’m on the cellphone with one vet who’s basically saying, ‘We can do emergency surgery tonight for $10,000. It’s going to be a really exhausting surgical procedure on the canine, and we’re unsure if it should repair the issue.’ Ten thousand {dollars}, it’s going to be very exhausting, and he won’t survive it. If he survives it, he’ll most likely must undergo chemo. If you place him by means of chemo, and the chemo has any actual adversarial results, which it most likely will, we’ll counsel you place him down.
“So it was like on one path was this long string of invasive things that would make my dog’s quality of life bad, and then literally on the other line, I have a vet saying we can put your dog down, but our last appointment is at five. And this is 3:30 in the middle of the day, so I have an hour and a half to make a choice and say goodbye to my dog essentially. And I’m cutting weight and I’m packing my bags to leave for fight week. So I just sucked it up, I went and cut some weight in the garage, rinsed off, and I had about 45 minutes to say goodbye to my dog and then we drove him to the vet, we put him down and said goodbye to him and came home, packed our bags, and went to sleep. Woke up for fight week.”
Astonishingly, Harley’s dying wasn’t the one recent tragedy that Fili needed to take care of.
Fili talked about in his post-fight speech that he additionally noticed two associates cross away throughout his preparation for UFC 296. It was a sequence of experiences that wounded him, but additionally offered helpful perspective.
“I also had a friend get hit who was riding his Harley Davidson, he got hit by an Amazon truck and died almost instantly,” Fili stated. “He was like slightly brother to me. That occurred initially of the camp, six weeks out. Two weeks after, my buddy received hit on his motorbike. I had one other buddy who I’ve identified for 20 years cross away, he overdosed.
“I’ve had all these things happen. I’ve dealt with all these things, and the only choice was either to dwell on it and just wallow in it, or just hopefully take the lesson of none of this s*** is guaranteed. I don’t mean to be morbid, but this could be the last time you and I ever speak. None of this is guaranteed, and it’s a cliché, people say it all the time, but it never registered until recently. You really have to appreciate each moment. You might only get to do this this one time, and being able to do it this one time is a gift. So I went into fight week like it was my debut. I went into fight week like I was doing everything for the first time.”
Through all of it, Fili persevered, taking Almeida out within a spherical to attain his first end since a first-round knockout of Sheymon Moraes in July 2019. Watching Fili’s efficiency and celebration, one may very well be forgiven for not realizing the interior turmoil he was hiding up till that second.
Once he had a while for himself, although, it was a distinct story.
“When I win the fight, and I hug my teammates and I tell my coaches I love them, just be present and be grateful and enjoy it, because I understand that loss is part of life, but the losses I’ve taken recently have happened so fast that the only way that I can deal with is to just take the lesson of being grateful for right now,” Fili stated. “That’s what I leaned into this combat week. Every second of the combat and each second of the method, even the burden minimize, each single piece of this combat camp, and this combat week, and this fight-night I practiced gratitude for.
“And then I left the arena, shook hands, laughed, hugged, said all the ‘I love yous,’ got escorted from the front of [the] New York New York [casino] into an elevator to go back to my room. I was in an elevator by myself, I was finally alone for the first time the entire week, and then I broke down and cried in the elevator by myself. I was able to finally get it out, but it took a whole week of not being able to process it.”
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