9-year-old on a wheelchair to UFC Fight Night; the inspirational story of Gabriel Silva

Gabriel 'Gabito' Silva's story is nothing short of inspirational. When the Brazilian bantamweight joined UFC, everyone saw him as a huge prospect but little did they know that Silva was once, at the young age of 9, forced to stay away from all kinds of physical activity after being diagnosed with a rare syndrome.

Ahead of Silva's upcoming fight against Kyler Phillips at UFC Norfolk, we look back at one of the most difficult stages of his life. It started off as a lingering pain on his left leg while the fighter was returning to his house from his uncle's place and his mother initially passed it off as tiredness until she realized that the pain wasn't going away. (h/t MMA Fighting)

Silva revealed that he was suffering from Legg-Calve-Perthes which is essentially a hip disorder that restricts normal flow of blood to the femur and causes the bone to decay. Once he was diagnosed, a young Silva knew life would never be the same again.

“We went to four or five different doctors before we finally found out what it was. The other doctors had no idea what it was. We were worried because I was in pain, but one doctor finally identified this syndrome. From that point on, I went through difficult times. I had to stop playing every contact sport. It was a very complicated phase for me, because I couldn’t do anything at school. I loved playing soccer, and I couldn’t even run. It was complicated, man.”

Silva always wanted to be a professional soccer player and here he was, on a wheel chair, helplessly watching his dream fade away. He was still obsessed about the sport until the day his doctor told his parents that the time it would take Silva to recover will not allow him to become a professional player.

“The doctor said that I would lose a lot of time until I was fully recovered. He crushed my expectations right there, destroyed my dreams. My mother even cried, but I didn’t really understand.”

By the time he healed, his brother Erick became a recognized face in the world of MMA and somehow, that led him to change his passion and pursue MMA instead.

“I went back to the doctor’s office two or three months later saying I was training. He said, ‘Look, that’s not something I would advise you to do, but I won’t say you can’t. You can do whatever you want. You have that limitation in your leg, and it will hurt sometimes.’ And he wasn’t wrong. Sometimes I feel some pain, but nothing that stops me from doing what I do every day. If he was just like the other doctors and said I couldn’t fight, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten this far.”