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.
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 “feeling better every day” almost three weeks after the incident, but said doctors weren’t able to determine what caused it.
“Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened,” Barcelos told MMA Fighting. “It was a sudden illness. I fell ill, and I felt my whole body really starting to go numb. After that, I don’t 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’t understand what happened. I’m undergoing a battery of tests here in Vegas. I had another MRI on Monday and we’re waiting for a good result. The doctor hasn’t released the results yet, and everything is being kept very confidential, but I feel better every day.”
The UFC flew Barcelos’ 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’s still unclear if he will be forced to retire.
“It hasn’t been ruled out,” Barcelos said of retirement. “This is a very difficult time because we’re athletes, we’re fighters, and you never want to stop. A lot of the time, your body can’t 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’t want to stop. Everything is still very fresh for me. Saying that I’m going to stop, that I’ll never fight again, is very difficult right now when everything is still so recent. I’m not even thinking about that possibility. Could it happen? Of course, it could, but I don’t want to think about it. On the contrary, I’m trying to enjoy and make the most of this moment in the best way possible.”
“And that’s what we’re aiming for,” he continued. “A 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, ‘Raoni, 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.’
“Thank God, I feel healthy and I’m getting better every day. This is the process. There’s 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’m not taking any medication at all today. My body is completely clear of medication, and the treatment was very aggressive at the beginning. … I know that the people who care about me and appreciate my work were really scared because, up until that point, nobody knew… It could have been something much more serious. I might not have come back. So, because of that, I’m just grateful to everyone who prayed for me, regardless of their religion, and who simply asked for me to come back safely.”
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.
“I was with Dana [Tuesday] here at the Contender Series, and I thanked him for everything,” Barcelos said. “The UFC changed my life — not just my life, but my family’s life as well — and I told him that. And he said, ‘Man, it’s so good to see you doing well, and you’ll be back before you know it.’”
“Hunter followed the ambulance and got to the hospital very quickly, too,” he added. “By that point, I was already lucid, answering questions and talking to everyone. He said it was a great fight, that he’d never seen such an intense fight, and that it was beautiful to watch. He also announced that I’d 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’s when I felt much more at ease.”
Future is “in God’s hands,” Barcelos said, and he feels ready for whatever happens. However, the 39-year-old veteran — who has fought 28 times as a professional MMA fighter, 16 of those under the UFC banner — hopes to have the chance to continue doing it.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen from here on out,” Barcelos said. “I 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’m 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’t 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.
“But 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’m receiving a lot of recognition. It’s even funny because maybe if I had won the fight, the way I was winning it, I wouldn’t be getting the recognition I’m getting today. So that’s how it is. Everything happens in God’s time, and if this is how He decided it should happen, then that’s okay. My heart is at peace.”