Jack Hermansson Details Coping with COVID-19 Ahead of UFC Fight Night 186

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“The Joker” still hasn’t completely recovered.

Jack Hermansson (22-6, 9-4 UFC) celebrated a victory in his latest walk to the Octagon. The 33-year old imposed his will and skills over Edmen Shahbazyan in a 185-pound affair that went down at UFC Fight Night 186. Before that, the Swedish fighter had to cope with a bad case of COVID-19 that affected his performance. On top of that, The Frontline Academy representative confessed that he still feels the side effects of the virus.

“It was like the flu, you know?” said Hermansson. “You’re aching in your body, you have a headache, a little bit of coughing, fever. Basically, you are just in your bed all day and you just get out if you eating something. But when you eat, you don’t get the taste of it. It was not good, you know? It was a bad time. I wasn’t dying or anything like that but I was definitely very, very sick. The thing was that even after the fever went away and stuff like that, [I] was still very, very exhausted. I was so, so tired. That was the worst thing to get rid of before the fight. Even four days before the fight, my coach told me, ‘Jack, I don’t want you to take this fight,’ because we trained a little bit and he saw how tired I was. He was just, ‘This is not good,’ but I told him, ‘I’ve been in the United States for 40 days, so I’m not going to leave without the fight. I’m going to do this,’ and fortunately, I did it and managed to win the fight.”

Tudor Leonte started writing about mixed martial arts in 2013 for Italian media outlets. His journey with Sherdog begun in 2018 and now he covers One Championship and countless European shows. You can follow him on Twitter @MrTudorLeonte.