At least five masked men invaded a local MMA gym in Hasselbrook, Hamburg at 9:45 pm on Wednesday night and attacked German top-ten middleweight Abeku Afful, with knifes, a baton and a machete, an eye witness told German MMA website GNP1.de. A main artery and a tendon of Afful's left leg have been severed by a machete hack. The fighter has immediately been transported to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery due to a significant amount of blood loss. As of right now, there is no information on Afful's condition.

Edit: Sources close to the situation have reported that, after numerous surgeries, Afful is no longer in a life-threatening condition, but will remain in the intensive care unit and might as well need another surgery.

An extremely graphic picture of the injury has been taken by a witness and can be seen here.

Afful was preparing himself for a scheduled main event fight at a local show in Bremen next Saturday, while most of the students had already left the gym. According to the witness, the attackers rushed directly into the room that Afful was training in, which makes this seem like a concerted move specifically aimed at the 35-year old fighter.

Shortly after the attack, Ismail C., the head coach of another MMA gym in Hamburg, was arrested by the police. Witnesses have identified him due to his voice and physique.

Local insiders report that Afful was a long-time student of C., but eventually left the gym to open his own team, which has created some serious animosity between the two. The alleged reason for last night's attack was a female coach of C.'s gym who also trained at Afful's school. Both the coach and Afful, have been threatened via text message before the incident happened.

However, it is important to note: as of right now, the police have no evidence that C. was indeed one of the intruders. Neither Afful nor C. have been available for comment, yet.

Hamburg has been infamous for it's red-light wars for many years, that often times involved boxers and other martial artists. However, this incident doesn't seem to have any connection to the city's world-famous red light district.

The UFC has a scheduled fight night in Hamburg on September 3.