Edgar Chairez said he was shot once and ran for his life during a gun attack in his native Mexico more than a decade ago, a story he brought back into focus just days before his fight with Bruno Silva at UFC Vegas 118 on Saturday.

The 30-year-old posted a photo earlier this year showing him lying on a hospital bed after surviving the shooting, and he has now described how close he came to dying in the street confrontation. Chairez said it happened during a friend’s fight. He was in the group trying to break it up when the shooters opened fire, hitting his friend about four times and striking him once.

He said the bullets kept coming as he ran, with the gunmen firing until they ran out of ammunition. Chairez said the only reason he got away was that the shooters had terrible aim. “The good thing was, they were such idiots,” he said. “They had terrible aim.”

The memory sits alongside a different version of his childhood. Chairez said violence was always around him growing up on the streets of Mexicali, but he also said he was focused on sports, not crime. Football was his path for as long as he could remember, he said, and he played until he was 18. His dream, he said, was to become a professional footballer.

That makes the shooting story sharper, not softer. Chairez said he was never a gang member, never hung around that world, and never wanted the life he saw around him. “My mindset was always about football,” he said. The attack, and the hospital bed that followed, is part of why his survival now feels like more than luck to him. “The good thing is, I’m still here for a reason,” he said.

Chairez enters UFC Vegas 118 with a 3-2 record and one no-contest, riding wins over CJ Vergara and Felipe Bunes after losses to Joshua Van and Tatsuro Taira. He said he wants a victory Saturday not just for his own run in the UFC, but so he can push for an invitation to watch a World Cup match live. After that, he said, he wants a couple of weeks off.