Forne UFC-fightern Matt Hamill skulle tidigare ha deltagit under WSOF 19, då det var tänkt att han skulle möta sin senaste motståndare Thiago Silva, men fick sedan dra sig ut på grund av sjukdom. Han var sedan på väg för att träffa sin familj i Ohio och upptäckte då en kvinna som körde i fel riktning på motorvägen.
Det här berättar Hamill, via ”MMAFighting”:
Everyone was going like 70 miles per hour. She was driving the wrong way, just kind of swerving around. She was going slower but she was going on the wrong side of the street, and you could see her face, she was kind of drooling. There was obviously something going on with her that just wasn’t right. She was breathing fine, but you could just tell there was something, some issues.
It seemed like Pac-Man, trying to avoid all the little ghosts. She was all over the place.
Hamill vände då om och började köra upp bredvid den berusade kvinnans bil och upptäckte då en liten pojke som grät i baksätet. Han tog då saken i egna händer och slog in rutan på kvinnans bil för att stanna fordonet.
A lot of the cars, they had been honking. And I’m sure that the noise and the car just weaving (upset him). He had a seatbelt on and he was in his car seat, but I’m sure it was a scary situation and he was worried what was going on. The mother was just weaving all over the road.
He was fine and everything, just a little bit upset, but if she hadn’t been stopped I definitely feel like someone would’ve ran into something. The mother was on drugs and had been drinking apparently.
Polisen anlände snart till platsen och arresterade kvinnan och tackade Hamill för sitt snabba agerande. Hamill är glad att pojken var oskadd och tror att det var adrenalinet som gjorde att han lyckades med det hela, trots att han fortfarande var sjuk.
Det här berättar Hamill:
Before the weigh-ins, I started to feel a bit ill, but I was just trying to cope with it myself. I started to feel maybe like I had a sinus infection in the beginning. I felt like my head was getting pretty full and I started to have some drainage, and then that evening I went to bed and it just started getting worse and worse.
(After weigh-ins), I started to have stomach issues. I had some sort of virus inside and I wasn’t able to eat anything, keep anything down. My coaches were looking at me like, ‘Man, you’re not looking to good.’ So I went to the doctor and the doctor checked me out. He said, ‘My goodness, you can’t fight. There’s no way. You have this awful sinus infection. You have a stomach virus as well.’ The two of them combined, I was throwing up a bunch and I was having a really tough time. I had been training so hard, it was a really hard decision for me after doing all this training, then to all of a sudden get sick. It just really sucks that happened.
Det har nu gått nästan 3 år sedan Hamill senast vann en match på professionell nivå, då han mötte Roger Hollett 2012. Han förlorade sedan mot Thiago Silva ett år senare.
