UFC 174's Andrei Arlovski discusses sad tie to 2011's Lokomotiv plane crash

These days former UFC heavyweight champ Andrei Arlovski likes to talk about the “upgrades” he’s made since he last wore UFC gold.

He mostly means his improved striking, his stronger wrestling base, all the things fans will see in the cage on Saturday night when he returns to the UFC after six years away to fight fellow heavyweight Brendan Schaub at UFC 174 in Vancouver (pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET).

But there’s one skill Arlovski has developed in recent years that fans won’t get to see, at least not unless the staff at Rogers Arena pulls up the floor to reveal the ice rink usually reserved for the Vancouver Canucks.

It started with a promise. In 2011, when a tragic plane crash killed the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team of the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League, Arlovski lost a friend.

Ruslan Salei, a former NHL player who, like Arlovski, hailed from Belarus, was on that flight. The two had met years earlier, at UFC 59 in Anaheim. At the time, Salei was a defenseman for the Anaheim Ducks, who played their games in the same building that hosted that UFC that night. Arlovski was heavyweight champ, riding high on a six-fight winning streak.

It turned out to be a bad night at work for Arlovski. A first-round TKO suffered at the hands of Tim Sylvia cost him a title he has never regained. But afterward an unexpected friendship developed between Arlovski and Salei.

“He came to some of my fights after that,” Arlovski tells USA TODAY Sports and MMAjunkie. “We had vacations sometimes in Belarus at the same time. He became my friend.”

When Salei was killed in the plane crash, Arlovski made a vow to his friend’s son.

“When I was at his funeral, I promised his son that the next time I was in California we would go skate together,” Arlovski says.

The only problem was, Arlovski didn’t know how.

“When I promised him that, I took a personal trainer in Chicago, and we skated maybe three times a week,” Arlovski says. “It was kind of tough [to learn], but now I really like it.”

Not only was Arlovski able to fulfill his promise to Salei’s son, he’s also taken up hockey himself.

“I’m not very good,” he adds quickly. “But I try.”

Still, there seems to be little danger that he’ll leave the cage for the rink, and until recently it seemed like even his days as a pro fighter might be numbered. Arlovski, 35, has bounced from one organization to another in recent years, and it was something of a shock when UFC President Dana White announced that the organization was bringing back the former titleholder.

Not that Arlovski was surprised. He always knew he’d make it back to the UFC one day, he insists, but when he finally heard it was a done deal, even he was overcome with emotion.

“I got tears in my eyes,” he says. “Then in the next 30 or 40 minutes, I got over 700 messages on my Twitter, my Facebook. People were very happy for me, so now I’m very excited to fight for those people who were happy for me, who stayed my fans all these years.”

Arlovski (21-10 MMA, 10-4 UFC) comes in as a slight underdog against Schaub (10-3 MMA, 6-3 UFC), who is four years his junior. He’s been told that he’s in big trouble on Saturday night, that Schaub is very much like a younger version of himself.

“But we’ll see which is going to be better,” Arlovski says. “The young version, or the old version with some upgrades.”

For more on UFC 174, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.