When UFC women’s bantamweight Valentina Shevchenko heads to the octagon to meet former champ Holly Holm this weekend at UFC on FOX 20, her longtime coach, Pavel Fedotov, will be at her side.

Two months ago, the 28-year-old Kyrgyzstan native wasn’t even sure whether Fedotov would live after he sustained a gunshot to the left side of his abdomen during an apparent robbery in their adopted city of Lima, Peru.

“Now, he’s feeling very good,” Shevchenko told MMAjunkie during a conference call in support of her FOX-televised fight on Saturday at United Center in Chicago. “Not very good, but good. He’s able to do a lot of things.”

At the height of her training camp for UFC on FOX 20, Shevchenko and Fedotov were sitting at a restaurant when thieves stormed in and began assaulting customers. Fedotov, brandishing a pistol, told her to hide and then took on the assailants while exchanging gunfire in the street outside the restaurant. One assailant was killed, and Fedotov was also shot.

Shevchenko came to her coach’s aid, and the two went via cab to a local hospital, where Fedotov stayed for several days.

The incident’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Shevchenko’s (12-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC) last UFC bout ended in a decision loss to now-champ Amanda Nunes, and Holm (10-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC) offered a huge opportunity to get into title contention after a setback. With a traumatic incident coming at the height of her training champ, it would be understandable if she had reservations about getting into the cage. But she said she never considered withdrawing from the bout, and instead, she quickly regrouped. It was Fedotov who helped her get back in the gym.

“When it happened, it was a very hard shock for me, because all of the week, I could not train,” Shevchenko said. “I couldn’t think about anything else. I just spent all my time in the hospital by him.

“So it was a difficult time for me, but even at that moment, Pavel, he said after staying a few days in the hospital that we need to move forward and we need to focus on the fight. After a week or 10 days, I was focused just on my preparation and thinking only about the fight. This helped me a lot to get through it.”

For Shevchenko, the No. 10 ranked fighter in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA women’s bantmaweight rankings, the fight with No. 2 Holm is about more than her career. It’s about living a life she’s wanted since she was 5.

“Already I’ve been training more than 20 years of my life,” she said. “Sometimes people ask me, ‘Can you imagine your life without martial arts or doing something different?’ And I say no. Because this is my life, this is what I want to be, and I’m very happy my destiny was to be a martial artist. This is what I really, really love.”

Recently, she posted a pictures on Instagram of her team taking in the sights around Chicago. Fedotov is at her side, as he will be on Saturday night.

“It’s lucky for me that he’s recovered,” she said. “He will be in my corner. It means a lot to me, so I’m very happy it’s in the past.”

For more on UFC on FOX 20, check out the UFC Rumors section of MMAjunkie.