💥 Read this must-read post from BBC Sport 📖
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✅ Main takeaway:
When Shim Rok chose to flee from the police, he didn’t think he would last a day.
He was wrong, he had evaded them for seven years. But what is remarkable is that this will get him out of difficult life in an unexpected way.
After being charged with robbery with violence and assault in 2014, Liverpool player Rock fled when he was 20, fearing he would be jailed for a crime he did not commit.
He packed his belongings, set his alarm for 5am and left his home in Toxteth the next morning.
“I thought they were going to ban this passport, but they didn’t,” Rock told BBC Sport.
“Then I thought that when I got to the border in France, they would say, ‘Passports, please,’ and arrest me. They didn’t even look at my passport.
“I got off the Eurostar in France and said, ‘Wow.’ Then I realized they weren’t going to stop me.”
Rock, whose full name is Shakim Rock, moved to Malaysia, and it would take seven years before he was arrested again in the UK, where he spent six months in pre-trial detention.
In 2022, he was proven innocent in court, clearing his name of the charge that cast a shadow over his life.
Now, after building a four-fight winning streak in European promotion Oktagon, Rock is set to make his UFC debut at the age of 32.
Rock, who trains at Next Generation MMA Gym in Liverpool alongside Paddy Pimblett, will face Tajikistan’s Nurulu Aliyev in a lightweight bout in Qatar on Saturday.
His Liverpool teammate Luke Riley also made his UFC debut on the same card against Austrian featherweight Bogdan Jarad.
“That was my old life, this is my new life, and now the sky’s the limit,” Rock said.
“Everything I went through, all the obstacles, all the doors that were slammed in my face, all the haters — it built my character and made me hungrier.”
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