Ap Toledo (Ohio, USA)

Toledo (Ohio, USA)

Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-08:17

UFC Hall of Famer and former champion Mark Coleman

called himself

"the happiest man in the world"

as he hugged his family members from a hospital bed.

Coleman, the first heavyweight champion of the world in 1997, was airlifted in critical condition to a

Fremont hospital

on Wednesday after

saving his parents from a

house fire in Ohio this week, according to his daughter Morgan Coleman.

He was intubated and sedated due to inhaled smoke.

At first he was connected to a ventilator fighting for his life but his progress is good and he is now breathing on his own.

"I swear to God I'm very lucky

," said the mixed martial arts legend in an emotional video posted Thursday on his Instagram account.

"I am the happiest man in the world. I swear to God that I am very lucky. I can't believe that my parents are alive. I had to make a decision.

I left my room, I went to the door and the situation was already horrible and I couldn't breath

. I had to go out, I went back in and rescued them. I can't believe it. I made it but I couldn't find Hammer," Coleman said through tears once he woke up.

Morgan Coleman had posted that her father entered the burning house several times and was able to get her mother and father out.

Coleman then said his father,

59, was "fighting for his life after this heroic act

," but

was unable to rescue his dog, Hammer

, from the fire: "I got them (his parents) out, but I couldn't find him." to Hammer," Coleman said in the video.

Another of Coleman's daughters, Kenzie, said on Instagram that Hammer woke her father up with her barking.

Morgan Coleman has set up a gofundme.com site for her father, raising more than $70,000 as of Thursday afternoon.

Coleman is considered the inventor of ground-and-pound, a technique of immobilizing an opponent that Khabib Nurmagomedov raised to the level of art during his brilliant career.

Coleman was the

first UFC heavyweight champion in 1997

, when he defeated Dan Severn.

He won 16 of the 26 fights he fought throughout his 14-year career and was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2008.

The Ohioan (Fremont) was an amateur wrestler before dedicating himself to mixed martial arts (MMA), winning an NCAA title at Ohio State in 1988 and competing in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.