A Russian MMA fighter got more than just a buzz from the crowd after winning a bizarre cannabis-fuelled fight in Thailand, he got electrocuted while celebrating.
Ivan Parshikov, a former ONE Lumpinee contender, had just won his bout at the controversial Weed Boxing Championship, where fighters are allowed to blaze up before stepping into the ring.
But as Parshikov clambered onto the ropes to soak up the crowd’s applause, he grabbed a ringside light and got the shock of his life.
Video of the incident, now doing the rounds online, shows the 16-5-0 fighter suddenly freeze like a statue before collapsing limp to the canvas outside the ropes with a loud electrical buzz ringing out.
The cause? A cocktail of dodgy wiring and standing water around the ring, for reasons still unclear.
“He was frozen stiff for a second and then just dropped,” one witness said. “It looked like he’d been tasered.”
Despite the terrifying footage, Parshikov miraculously avoided serious injury.
While some outlets wrongly claimed he was electrocuted (which implies death or grave harm), experts clarified he suffered an electric shock and recovered within moments, even diving back into the water, bizarrely, after hitting the floor.
Medical staff were quick to check him over for any delayed effects like cardiac arrhythmia, but the Russian scrapper lived to fight another day, quite literally.
The dramatic KO came after the Russian snapped a two-fight losing streak, having been out of the cage for over a year following defeats to Kazakbai Tilenov in 2024 and Ben Royle in 2023, reported Phuket Mail.
Parshikov took the electrocution in his stride and poste a response to the incident on Instagram.
“The idea of diving from the ring into the pool was not the most successful one . I’ll upload the full chronology of the events a bit later,” he wrote.
It might not have been the comeback he imagined but it was certainly a shocking return to the spotlight.
The story Shocking victory: Russian fighter’s electrifying celebration (video) as seen on Thaiger News.
