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Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight contender Erick Silva has been infected with coronavirus in his native Brazil. In addition, six of his family members — including his five-month-old son Carlos — have also contracted the disease.
“It started with my wife,” Silva told Combate (transcribed by Adam Martin). “The first day she felt it, she had a lot of headaches, chills, and we didn’t care. At first nobody cares. We thought it was an allergy, she didn’t smell or taste anything. Then it was my mother-in-law, she also stopped tasting, then it was me. Then everyone had the same symptoms, my sister-in-law, my father-in-law, the same symptoms for everyone.”
Silva, who turns 36 in June, spent over six years competing inside the Octagon and while the “Tiger” produced action-packed fights, he struggled to stay consistent. The Brazilian is currently winless in two trips to the cage for Bellator MMA.
“Everyone is fine,” Silva said about his family’s health. “The whole family took it, I’m at my wife’s parents’ house and we all had the symptoms. The interesting thing is that we have people of all ages, from my 5-month-old baby, a 10-year-old son, there are people aged 23, 26, 35, 52, 58 … They were almost all ages and we all had the same symptoms, but the biggest problem is that, in the beginning, when we started to feel the first symptoms, we didn’t know what it was.”
Coronavirus has locked down most of the world in an attempt to flatten the curve, but that won’t stop UFC from holding its UFC 249 pay-per-view (PPV) card on April 18.