Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Paige VanZant is now experiencing COVID-19 symptoms after her husband Austin Vanderford recently tested positive for the virus.
Bellator welterweight Austin Vanderford was scheduled to fight at Bellator 246 this weekend. Those plans are now off the table after he tested positive for COVID-19.
Now, it looks like things have taken a turn for the worse. Newly-signed BKFC fighter and former UFC prospect Paige VanZant recently made claims that Vanderford may have gotten her sick.
“12 Gauge” told the whole story in a recent YouTube video she uploaded, while also asking for help from fans online. VanZant says she never rendered a positive test but felt most of the symptoms.
Well….. we are officially sick. We need your help though. So, Austin was starting to get sick and tested positive. I immediately went and got tested and it came back negative…. the next day I started getting sick and have progressively been getting worse the last few days. Today I feel absolutely terrible!!!!!
I posted the full video on our YouTube and we need some advice. Do I have Covid, or something else? I have a 102 fever and tons of other symptoms. Has he been sick this whole time since he tested positive a month ago.
I am so confused by all of this. We are staying home but can’t seems to find any answers. Should I go get tested again???? Please watch, the link is in my bio. LMK.
The VanZants recently moved to Coconut Creek, FL to train at American Top Team, where according to Vanderford, had at least five fighters testing positive. Among them is UFC lightweight Thiago Moises, who was pulled off his scheduled fight on Saturday.
Nonetheless, ATT owner Dan Lambert downplayed it as a “bad run of luck.”
“[Florida was] up to 15,000 cases a day, and now we’re under two, last I checked,” Lambert said (via MMA Fighting). “It’s just a bad run of luck. Everybody’s in close proximity to each other, so if somebody happens to catch it, you can do everything you can to be cautious and put standards in place to get people tested and do temperature checks when they come in and be diligent when people feel symptoms and get them out of the gym and keep them out of the gym until they test negatives.
“But if somebody is asymptomatic and passes it on to somebody else, the people in their group are prone to get it. You can’t socially distance when you’re getting ready for a fight. It’s going to happen.
“People have to live their lives – they’ve got to go out and earn a living,” he added. “I can’t tell people at our gym, you can’t go to work because somebody else at the gym that you may or may not have worked with got sick. It just doesn’t work like that.
“Back when this thing first came out and nobody knew how serious it was, or what the long-term effects were of people who got sick or how high the mortality rate may or may not be with the disease, I totally understand shutting down and doing what you have to do, because nobody knows where it’s going.
“But with the knowledge that we have and the chances of having serious health effects by being exposed to this that are otherwise healthy are just so, so minimal. I don’t have second thoughts. We’re going to run our gym the best we can. We’re going to do our best to keep the gym as safe and protected as we can, and unless the science proves otherwise, and in my opinion, it hasn’t, we’re going to be open for business.”
PVZ’s bare-knuckle boxing debut isn’t set in stone yet. But as BKFC president David Feldman also told MMA Fighting, he will consider a postponement if VanZant tests positive.