Upcoming UFC heavyweight title challenger Fabricio Werdum and a significant portion of his fight camp nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a unforeseen set of circumstances in Mexico recently.
As MMA Fighting reported, "Vai Cavalo" and about a dozen of his teammates/coaches moved to Nevado de Toluca, Mexico to prepare for his UFC 180 championship bout with Cain Velasquez.
On the very first day sleeping in the house, tragedy nearly struck.
I was there with 12 other guys from my team, and they got us a gasoline generator to get power. They usually left the generator outside the house, but put this one inside the house ... We were training inside the house, had dinner and went to bed. They didn’t tell us to turn that thing off before sleeping. I woke us in the middle of the night with a huge headache, nausea, and couldn’t get out of bed. Everyone was dizzy. My brother got out of his bed and managed to turn that thing off ... We went to the hospital, everybody throwing up and with diarrhea. The doctor said that we would have died in two hours if nobody had turned that thing off.
As a result of the almost fatal stroke of bad luck, Werdum and his cohorts understandably moved to a new location in the Mexican town of Jiquipilco, 60 miles away from Nevado de Toluca.
Werdum earned a crack at UFC gold after going 4-0 during his second stint in the Octagon dating back to February 2012.
Since then, the Brazilian submission wizard has scored decisive wins over Roy Nelson, Mike Russow, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Travis Browne.
According to the UFC's official rankings, Werdum is the top ranked heavyweight mixed martial artist in the world.
Meanwhile, Velasquez, who coached opposite Werdum on the Latin American version of The Ultimate Fighter, has been on a tear since losing the heavyweight strap to Junior dos Santos at UFC on FOX 1 in November 2011.
While he has only fought two opponents since then, the former Arizona State Sun Devil absolutely rolled through Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva and JDS in all four subsequent contests—recapturing the title at UFC 155.
Velasquez has had few problems inside the cage outside of his flash KO to dos Santos, overwhelming his opponents with his wrestling and cardio.
UFC 180 takes place at Arena Ciudad de Mexico in Mexico City on November 15, with Velasquez vs. Werdum headlining the pay-per-view event.
John Heinis is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA editor for eDraft.com.
