"Half dying - gut sticking out"

Thai boxing 

Oliver Axelsson was stabbed: "The intestines stuck out of the stomach" 

 

Note! Warning for strong images 

  

Kristoffer Bergström  

Published 00.18  

 

Oliver Axelsson had stopped to buy water when he heard footsteps.  

 

In the next second, the MMA fighter was on the ground. 

 

The intestine spilled out of a pocket on the stomach.  

 

Desperate hurt it did.  

 

It was twelve o'clock in the day, the sun was shining and the MMA pro was slipping in and out of consciousness. The 26-year-old was terrified, confused, tormented. But surprisingly, the perpetrator seemed calm. He couldn't have been more than eighteen years old and stood there laughing. 

 

In his hand the guy held a kitchen knife.  

 

Oliver's girlfriend rushed over to her partner, lifting the shirt and inspecting the wound. The shiny rose-purple intestine stuck out like a tongue, stopping the blood from spilling out, but Oliver put his fingers on it and tried to push it back into his body.  

 

The knife penetrated 15 cm  

 

The knifeman disappeared in the commotion, people rushed there, an umbrella was stretched out as sun protection and an ambulance was called. After rushing to a smaller hospital, Oliver was taken to a larger one for emergency surgery.  

 

It was February 2023 and the crime took place in Phuket, Thailand, where Jönköpingssonen Axelsson had lived for the past two years. He had started martial arts as a 13-year-old and was soon selected for the junior national team in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He had won SM gold in the full-contact discipline K1 two years in a row, had long streaks of professional matches in Thai boxing and in the end invested wholeheartedly in MMA.  

 

Oliver Axelsson. 

There had been three professional welterweight matches. Three straight victories at the end of the first round and a recent nomination for "Swedish professional debutant of the year".  

 

But from a bunk in the hospital, it was nothing about elite sport, everything about being able to continue living.- The kitchen knife penetrated 15 centimeters.  

 

A muscle broke in the middle and a blood vessel broke, so I had lost 2.5 liters of blood, says Oliver Axelsson. 

 

Heard voices in the brain  

 

Were you wheeled straight into the operating room? 

 

- No. They did not operate until they had checked with insurance companies and signed papers. So I lay there half dying and then they took fingerprints to sign. 

 

Were you insured? 

 

- Yes. Luckily, my mom had forced me to get insurance before I left.  

 

With the paper exercise in place, the Swede was sedated and woke up a few days later with tubes in his stomach. He shared a room with "some screaming men, one more dying than the other". The pain from the scar was so excruciating and excruciating that it required strong doses of morphine.  

 

In a rare state of wakefulness, he was informed of two things: 

  

The perpetrator had been arrested and is said to have lived nearby.  

 

In the interrogation, it should have emerged that the eighteen-year-old had serious mental problems and that voices in his brain ordered him to murder a stranger. 

 

He himself would find it difficult to walk for the rest of his life. No martial arts were to be thought of. 

 

- But I was up on my feet after a week and walking around the hospital. The doctors were surprised.  

 

"No, I'm not a boxer..."  

 

After a couple of weeks in hospital, Oliver Axelsson was discharged to a new reality. Quitting the martial arts was unthinkable, but the scar on his stomach prevented him from kicking. Instead, he had to be boxed. Sharpen the part of MMA that he was best at from the beginning and plan for a return to the ring. 

 

It lasted until September 21 in the Thai province of Krabi. 

  

- I met some Frenchman who had a record of 8-0 in professional boxing. I don't remember the name but I lost, says Oliver Axelsson.  

 

Why didn't you meet a thug instead? 

 

- I don't get much out of meeting a bully. Axelsson has been questioned by the police, but the trial seems to be delayed. Celebrating a loss is not in his world of concepts, but hey, he's happy to be back. - I have missed the feeling of being in the ring again. It was good for me mentally to be able to go that match, he says. 

 

 Are you a boxer now? 

 

- No, I'm not a boxer. I have no idea when I'll be back and able to wrestle and kick again. It may take the time it takes. But if you have to answer yes or no: would you go to a professional MMA fight again? 

 

 - Yes, one hundred percent. Oliver Axelsson's intestine protrudes from his stomach.  

 

Oliver Axelsson's intestine protrudes from his stomach.