Nearly two months have passed since Dhafir Harris, the fighter better known as Dada 5000, collapsed and was rushed to the hospital after his Bellator 149match against Kimbo Slice on Feb. 19. Harris suffered cardiac arrest, severe dehydration, fatigue, and renal failure during and after the contest, and on Wednesday he broke his silence, comparing the ordeal to climbing through hell and back.
"When I actually fell inside that ring, Kimbo Slice never touched me," Harris said on The Dan LeBatard Show. "I had a heart attack. So, when I slammed against the cage and I went down, that was just the beginning.
"The heart is a muscle, so when the kidneys shut down and I'm still pushing, the next thing to go was the heart. So when my heart stopped, it's like, I was out of it. I didn't remember nothing. When they brought me back, I was inside the hospital and they said that I had two heart attacks -- and this is on paper we can provide to you guys. I had two heart attacks and I [flat-lined] twice. And for me, I was just thanking God, like, I'm here for a real reason. Because there's individuals out there who didn't go through a fraction of what I went through and they're no longer breathing."
"I was thinking to myself, ‘what is actually going on with me?' I didn't know at that time, medically, that my kidneys had locked up on me and that I was having a heart attack. And the last thing that I remember is that I was leaning on him, and he shifted away from me. He swung, but he missed, and I stumbled and I went down. The next thing, I woke up hours later and I was inside the hospital.
"I was dead," Harris added. "When you talk about your spirit leaving your body, looking at the light, but it's not your time to go, and you actually get brought back, that was my situation. Because I was pronounced dead, and they kept working, kept working, kept working. And I died minutes apart."
LINK: Dada 5000 breaks silence on Bellator 149 scare: 'I was pronounced dead'
