IN FEBRUARY 2021, UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili made one of the dumbest decisions of his life during one of the biggest snowstorms to hit Long Island, New York, in a decade. His coach, Ray Longo, told the entire Serra-Long Fight Team that the gym was closed for two days. Stay home. With training canceled, Dvalishvili went on a run around a nearby park. When he'd finished, he decided to have himself a nice little ice bath, right there in the lake.

"I don't like to check the temperature of a bath before I get in, because it's so cold and it makes it harder [to get in]," Dvalishvili tells ESPN. "I knew the water wasn't deep, so I didn't think I could jump in feetfirst. I wanted to jump in at an angle, like you do in shallow water. I didn't realize the water was frozen."

He

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