Dan Ige On Near-Death Surfing Incident: “My Head Hit The Reef”
Dan Ige has shared the Octagon with killers like Calvin Kattar and Edson Barboza, but the scariest opponent he faced was Mother Nature.
Ige caught up with Figthful for our “Crazy Injuries” series — you can watch the full video above. The no. 12 ranked featherweight revealed his scariest personal experience took place on a surfboard, not in the cage.
“The scariest would be outside of MMA or training. It was a surfing accident. I was surfing in my hometown of Haleiwa, Hawaii,” Ige recalled. “We were surfing and it was pretty big. When it’s big, the current gets insane and super strong out there. I remember a big set came in. I was taking off on this wave and I went over the falls and I just got held under for a super long time.”
“My head hit the reef. I was all discumbobled [sic]. I didn’t know where I was. I was trying to come back up. They have this section called the toilet bowl because the water kind of vortexes and pulls you down. There’s the reef and the current is really strong,” he explained. “I just remember almost not making it up. Barely making it up. Another wave came and held me down again. It was scary. Super scary. Probably scarier than any fighting, any training experience that I’ve ever witnessed.”
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