Raoni Barcelos is still awaiting an official diagnosis to find out what happened with his body during his UFC Vegas 121 main event clash with Raul Rosas Jr. and whether or not he will be able to resume his fighting career.<\/p>\n
Barcelos was up in the scorecards against a much younger opponent inside the Meta APEX on Sept. 26 when his body shut down for no apparent reason. Barcelos went unconscious and was immediately transported to a Level 1 trauma center for evaluation. Barcelos is \u201cfeeling better every day\u201d almost three weeks after the incident, but said doctors weren\u2019t able to determine what caused it.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, we don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d Barcelos told MMA Fighting. \u201cIt was a sudden illness. I fell ill, and I felt my whole body really starting to go numb. After that, I don\u2019t remember anything. I only remember coming to in the ambulance, asking my father what had happened, and him trying to explain it to me as best he could. It really was an unfortunate incident. I got sick, and to this day, we still don\u2019t understand what happened. I\u2019m undergoing a battery of tests here in Vegas. I had another MRI on Monday and we\u2019re waiting for a good result. The doctor hasn\u2019t released the results yet, and everything is being kept very confidential, but I feel better every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UFC flew Barcelos\u2019 family from Rio de Janeiro to Las Vegas to stay with him while he stays in the city for further exams. Barcelos said he visits the UFC Performance Institute daily for physical therapy and neurological tests, but it\u2019s still unclear if he will be forced to retire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t been ruled out,\u201d Barcelos said of retirement. \u201cThis is a very difficult time because we\u2019re athletes, we\u2019re fighters, and you never want to stop. A lot of the time, your body can\u2019t take it anymore, but your mind keeps you going. We really need to give it time to see what the future holds. But I want to make it clear right now that I don\u2019t want to stop. Everything is still very fresh for me. Saying that I\u2019m going to stop, that I\u2019ll never fight again, is very difficult right now when everything is still so recent. I\u2019m not even thinking about that possibility. Could it happen? Of course, it could, but I don\u2019t want to think about it. On the contrary, I\u2019m trying to enjoy and make the most of this moment in the best way possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s what we\u2019re aiming for,\u201d he continued. \u201cA lot of people have already retired me before my time [laughs], but I really need this time to figure out what comes next. I had a long talk with my father, Davi [Ramos], Andre Felipe, and Glover [Teixeira]. They told me, \u2018Raoni, enjoy this moment. Now is not the time to think about retirement. I think you can give that answer a little further down the road.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThank God, I feel healthy and I\u2019m getting better every day. This is the process. There\u2019s no way around it. The most important thing is that my heart is doing well. I went through a very difficult recovery period, with a lot of pain and strong medication, and thank God I\u2019m not taking any medication at all today. My body is completely clear of medication, and the treatment was very aggressive at the beginning. \u2026 I know that the people who care about me and appreciate my work were really scared because, up until that point, nobody knew\u2026 It could have been something much more serious. I might not have come back. So, because of that, I\u2019m just grateful to everyone who prayed for me, regardless of their religion, and who simply asked for me to come back safely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcelos was at the Meta APEX for recent UFC and Contender Series shows and had a short conversation with UFC CEO Dana White, and also revealed that UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell rushed to the hospital immediately after the incident to check on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was with Dana [Tuesday] here at the Contender Series, and I thanked him for everything,\u201d Barcelos said. \u201cThe UFC changed my life \u2014 not just my life, but my family\u2019s life as well \u2014 and I told him that. And he said, \u2018Man, it\u2019s so good to see you doing well, and you\u2019ll be back before you know it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHunter followed the ambulance and got to the hospital very quickly, too,\u201d he added. \u201cBy that point, I was already lucid, answering questions and talking to everyone. He said it was a great fight, that he\u2019d never seen such an intense fight, and that it was beautiful to watch. He also announced that I\u2019d won the bonus. That really stuck with me because you could see how concerned they were. Just the fact that he came to visit me and talk to me meant a lot. He was there again the next morning, along with the doctor, and that\u2019s when I felt much more at ease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Future is \u201cin God\u2019s hands,\u201d Barcelos said, and he feels ready for whatever happens. However, the 39-year-old veteran \u2014 who has fought 28 times as a professional MMA fighter, 16 of those under the UFC banner \u2014 hopes to have the chance to continue doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen from here on out,\u201d Barcelos said. \u201cI need a diagnosis to really understand what happened, but I have to keep living my life so that I can eventually get back to doing what I love most, which is fighting. But I\u2019m a guy who really respects my body and respects science and what the doctors have to say. I have to serve this six-month suspension without taking any [head] shots, and I can\u2019t let my heart rate get too high. It has to stay within a healthy range. That monitoring is already underway, and now life goes on.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I feel a sense of fulfillment, knowing that we did everything we had planned during the fight. It was a beautiful fight, a fight that everyone enjoyed. I\u2019m receiving a lot of recognition. It\u2019s even funny because maybe if I had won the fight, the way I was winning it, I wouldn\u2019t be getting the recognition I\u2019m getting today. So that\u2019s how it is. Everything happens in God\u2019s time, and if this is how He decided it should happen, then that\u2019s okay. My heart is at peace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raoni Barcelos is still awaiting an official diagnosis to find out what happened with his body during his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-929521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}