Former UFC fighter Sergio Moraes has spoken out about his battle with the Covid-19 virus recently and revealed that overcoming it was a tougher fight than he had expected.
“I’ve always respected the disease,” Moraes told Combate. “I have lots of friends in Europe and in the United States. I talked to them and knew that it was serious business. I thought that because I never smoked, drank, or partied, it would be easy for me if I caught it. It was not easy at all.
“It’s serious business. It’s an aggressive disease. If you think you’ll be all right because you’re an athlete or because you have a physical activities background, forget that. You better take precautions. If it’s hard for us who live a healthy lifestyle, I wonder what it’s like for those who don’t. When I was sick, I kept thinking I didn’t want my parents, my sister or my kids to go through this. People need to be aware and take care.”
Moraes went on to document the symptoms he experienced during his illness, including a fever, loss of taste and smell together with shortness of breath.
“Those were two tough weeks. I had all the symptoms. The scariest ones were the constant 104-degree fever and the headaches. You can’t find a good position to rest your head. I lost my sense of smell, I could not taste anything, it was bizarre. I only knew I was eating beans because I could see them. After four or five days with COVID-19, Felipe (his doctor) told me to put on a mask and go for a walk to see if I had shortness of breath. I said: ‘Are you crazy? How will I be out of breath just from walking?’. I came out of the back of my mom’s house, where I was isolated and walked up to the second floor, I didn’t even need to go outside, I was already out of breath. It was bizarre.”
Thankfully Moraes, who was released from the UFC late last year after an 8-5-1 run in the Octagon, eventually started to feel better and is now cautioning others to not take the disease lightly.
