UFC Heavyweight Walt Harris returns to the Octagon this Saturday to headline UFC Fight Night: Overeem vs. Harris, the promotion’s third event since returning from the pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Harris, it will be his first time back in action since the tragic murder of his 19-year-old stepdaughter Aniah Blanchard last fall.

The 36-year-old told TSN’s Aaron Bronsteter that he and his family are doing as well as can be expected and credits those around for helping them get to that point.

“We’re doing good, as good as we can be barring the circumstances,” Harris told TSN. “Overall, we’re together and we’re pulling each other through this, we’ve got a great support system here in the state of Alabama and our community of Homewood. The people have been unbelievable, every step of the way they’ve been here for us and it’s helped us a lot. We have our tough days, of course we miss her, but we’re doing as well as we can.”

Harris also credits his training partners, such as UFC middleweight Eryk Anders, for helping him take his mind off the terrible event his family was forced to endure and giving him a space to heal.

“It was a blessing, my teammates are amazing,” said Harris. “They’ve been with me since day one, they just pick me up and they’ve helped me find a reprieve from day-to-day thoughts and feelings that I have about all the things that I’ve been going through. Being in the gym around them gives me that solace and takes my mind out of the dark place and that’s why I wanted to get back in there as soon as I did. I took my time to grieve and go through my stuff, but I realized quickly that I needed my team and my family at the gym, so we got back in there and got to work.”

When Aniah Blanchard first went missing, many members of the MMA family stepped up to provide support, including both UFC president Dana White and light heavyweight champion Jon Jones boosting the reward total initially posted by the governor of Alabama. All of the help given to his family did not go unnoticed by Harris, now he wants to give back in the best way he knows how.

“It was overwhelming. Dana himself, that dude? I would run through a brick wall for him. What he’s done for my family, I’m about to cry thinking about it right now,” said Harris. “The whole MMA community, everybody around the world, I’m so grateful for them. Even the smallest things, just a comment on my social media, those things would help me throughout the day, it would give me motivation to get out of bed and go back to [the] gym, to keep plugging away.”

“When you see people really care and go above and beyond to make sure you’re all right, you want to repay them the best way you know how. My fighting, people enjoy it, so I want to get back in there, that’s the way I say thank you. Go in there, put on a show, fight my heart out and let the chips fall where they may.”

Harris also had a conversation with his wife Angela Haley-Harris, who encouraged him to get back into the Octagon and do what he loves and that’s what ultimately set the stage for his return.

“There was a small talk, but it was from her and that’s why I love her, because she knows me and understands me,” said Harris. “She came to me one day and said, ‘babe, you need to get back in the gym, I think it would be good for you to get your mind occupied and thinking about other things. Maybe if you got a fight and something to look forward to, it will pull you out of where you are.’ And that’s what I did, I called my manager and told him to tell the UFC either March or April and that’s how everything started to materialize and I just started working my ass off."

"I went to gym everyday training, I went out to Vegas to the (Performance Institute), went to Extreme Couture, worked with (Francis) Ngannou and those guys out there, just to get my mind focused and it helped, it definitely helped get out of the dark place I was in.”

Getting ready for a fight during the pandemic has thrown up challenges for many of the fighters that have competed on the Jacksonville cards. Harris says that trying to keep his routine has been the best way to get through it all.

“I’ve tried to stay as consistent as possible,” said Harris. “The only thing I’ve had to overcome is different times and different places that we would actually train, because we moved our gym, we got a new facility. That was pretty much the only hiccup that I had and then there was the few times the fight got cancelled, so we didn’t know if we needed to keep training as hard. We took a couple days and then we got right back to it and we finally got the fight we’ve been looking for.”