UFC
UFC QUOTABLES: Karo Parisyan discusses his battle with panic attacks
Nov 16, 2010 - 11:00:37 AM UFC QUOTABLES: Karo Parisyan discusses his battle with panic attacks

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

"If anybody has had a full-blown panic attack and an anxiety attack and has had pressure to take care of your family and doing all this and doing all that, and all of a sudden everything being taken away from you -- how do you react to that? How?

People have killed themselves having half of the (stuff) that I went through. I'm not being cocky. I'm not being (a jerk). I'm being honest here.

In the past two years I've been through stuff. I've been through hell and I've been back. People don't know what I went through.

'Karo is a mess.' I might have been a mess. I might still be a mess in a certain way. But I'm trying to put that leg forward.

I went halfway around the world in Australia. Fought a local town hero. Beat him in his own house, in his own game, and then came back home. That was something to prove. I proved something. … So I took a big step.

You have to understand, people that have panic attacks, they don't want to leave the house. They feel like they're going to die.

Whoever has been through what I'm telling you, with this disease, let's just say, they know exactly what I'm talking about.

And I want them to imagine themselves, that when they're having that anxiety, and they're feeling their heart is going to pop, and their brain is racing, and they cannot sit down -- I want them to think about, at the same time, you have to warm up because they're waiting for you out there, because you've got to walk out and fight a guy that's in a great gym whos going to take your head off in the cage."

-Karo Parisyan, who returns to the UFC this weekend at UFC 123, talks to USA Today about dealing with his panic attacks and much more.

Penick's Analysis: Parisyan has obviously been dealing with a lot of debilitating issues over the last couple of years with these panic attacks, and his head hasn't been in the game, but he's got a chance to turn things around on Saturday in his fight with Dennis Hallman. How successful he is in dealing with this issue going forward will determine what he can do with the rest of his career, but he's still young enough that he doesn't have to be done as a major threat to a lot of fighters in the welterweight division. Hopefully he can manage, and he can find a way to get himself back where he was in 2004-2006. He can still be a very exciting fighter, and I hope we see him somewhat in a return to form.