When Donald Cerrone squared off against Jeremy Stephens at UFC on FUEL TV 3: "Korean Zombie vs. Poirier" on May 15, 2012, in Fairfax, Virginia, he did so not long after dealing with a particularly nasty illness.

Dude "rolled" his intestines. He explains to Sherdog.com what happened this time and how it originally got to this point:

"I rolled my intestines. From my surgery years ago, I have a lot of intestinal and stomach problems still to this day, and I was in the ICU and they almost had to do surgery on me. ... I was racing some motocross and I wrecked real bad and just kind of spilled my guts out. They had to take a bunch of my intestines and part of my stomach. What happened this time is, my stomach basically rolled around the intestine. Man, talk about pain. It was like someone was stabbing me. Oh, it was so brutal. I had to go to the ER, and basically they had to empty all of my intestines out and then rush water down my stomach and try to get it to unspin, kind of like a garden hose. If you have a kink in the hose, you run water and the pressure will cause it to unravel. It worked, so thank God."

As he would go on to explain to the Savage Dog Show, his team pleaded with him to pull out of the fight, to which "Cowboy" obviously declined. Not only that, he would go on to decimate Stephens at the Patriot Center en route to winning a unanimous decision.

The victory got Cerrone back on the right track after dropping a decision to Nate Diaz.

The worst part in all this is Cerrone says he'll likely end up dealing with this issue again in the future. Which makes it all the more impressive that he's one of the top lightweights in the world today. Just remember that next time you watch him throw down inside the Octagon. His guts may very well have been rearranged just days before.

For a reminder of how awesome Cerrone looked against Stephens despite his stomach problems click here.