In the MMA world Monday, the figure holding the scale between integrity and lucre looked less like a blindfolded woman and more like Scott Coker.
The same day, Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos, a 38-year-old Brazilian veteran whose career dates back to the Vale Tudo era, indicated he aims to return to the Bellator MMA promotion by December following an injury he suffered in July after a Michael Page flying-knee knockout at Bellator 158.
As Santos (21-18) told Guilherme Cruz of MMA Fighting:
I had a great recovery. This time off was super important for me. I was so busy doing other stuff that I didn’t even notice how fast his month has passed. It was really uncomfortable three or four days after the surgery, but after that I pretty much rested and studied. I plan on coming back to training next week and fighting in December. … I will listen to what the doctors have to say. I have an appointment with the doctor next week to find out if he really clears me to train again, but I’m feeling super fine.
Reasonable enough, right? A tough guy doing what he does.
Oh, wait. There’s just one more thing. The injury was a skull fracture. And not just “any” skull fracture. Page literally beat Santos’ head in, leaving him with a depressed, frontal-sinus fracture easily seen without any of those fancy digital scans. (Although one of those was published, clearly showing a spidery dent across the forehead.) There was an operation, administered after a protracted and purportedly life-threatening period of brain swelling.
And he wants to come back in December? Bellator, helmed by Coker, could stand to pump the brakes on this.
Fair or not, Bellator, helmed by Coker, has recently earned something of a reputation as an outfit with little regard for athlete health and safety. This is an opportunity to rectify that. Bellator needs to protect Santos from himself, ignore the interest his return will surely generate and publicly rule him out for a December bout, if not longer. And after the public had such a detailed look at such a terrifying injury, it also makes sense to maximize transparency around the details of his pre- and post-operative treatment.
According to the Instagram post from Santos’ ex-wife, renowned women’s featherweight Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino, “the doctor said this very easily could have been life-threatening.”
UFC broadcaster Joe Rogan called it “the worst MMA injury I’ve ever seen.”
Doctors and officials had to wait several days for brain swelling—which can cause brain damage and even death, particularly in cases of depressed fractures like Santos’ that drive bone fragments into the brain—to subside before they could fly him from the fight’s host city of London to Texas and then perform surgery July 27.
That was barely one month ago. A December return would equal a five-month stint on the shelf. That does fall within the average healing-time window stipulated for depressed skull fractures, assuming no loss of brain function, in which case it’s much longer.
It’s not entirely unreasonable for an admitted lay person to conclude, then, that on paper, this return timeline is not unrealistic. At the same time, it seems equally not unrealistic to conclude the bare minimum recovery time, or close to it, does not mesh perfectly with one’s profession when that profession is head-punching.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s just say he’ll be fine by then and he should return; it’s his decision as a grown man, or whatever you want to say. He could get a rematch with Page. He could get a blockbuster with the division’s newest signee—former UFC contender Rory MacDonald. The Bellator braintrust, led by president Scott Coker, may be tempted to acquiesce to the siren call of the dollar bills, which will most likely be stronger for a relatively quick Santos return, on account of the rubbernecking.
They should resist that temptation. Santos, for whom Justino set up a GoFundMe page to offset medical bills but then canceled it after Bellator announced it would cover them, probably shouldn’t be allowed to fight again, and if he is, he should be fully and, as transparently as possible, cleared by physicians.
Speaking of physicians, I am not one of those persons, but Bellator expressed its support for those persons on the issue of brain injury just three months ago, when Coker and company showed up in Washington to donate an undisclosed sum of money and announce backing for the Professional Fighters Brain Health Study, a ongoing study investigating the effects of brain injury in combat sports athletes.
“This cause deserves to be noticed,” Coker said at the event. “The technology that we have today wasn’t available even five years ago. The fighters deserve to know. They deserve to have the truth.”
There are cases when Bellator’s truth has come under question, as has its commitment to fighter health and safety. The organization has staged several “freakshow” or “legends” fights that involved some notably awful circumstances.
No one implicated Bellator in the death this spring of Kimbo Slice, but Slice failed a drug test for steroids at Bellator 149, which ended up being his final fight.
Slice’s opponent in that fight, Dhafir Harris, aka Dada 5000, nearly died in the cage during his fight with Slice, only to see Bellator and the Harris family attempt to downplay (or maybe they just didn’t know) the gravity of Harris’ condition.
There was also the matter of their booking of Royce Gracie, 49, and Ken Shamrock, 52—that’s a combined age of 101 years old—on the same card. That “legends” main event ended with a first-round Gracie TKO. Shamrock, it turned out, also failed a drug test for steroids at the event.
Bellator doesn’t make any bones about booking these “legends” fights. To keep pace with the massive UFC, the argument goes, Bellator must get creative, as it—as all non-UFC MMA promotions—doesn’t have the talent stock to book shows toe-to-toe with the industry leader.
That’s fine. It’s canny business (and they’re not the only ones to do it, either, UFC included). With interest in Santos at a peak thanks to this gruesome injury, a play to maximize the cash would be understandable.
It would also be wrong.
You have to pay a kind of twisted respect to Santos for even stating a desire to come back so soon. It’s clearly motivated, at least in part, by pride, given that his emphatic loss and horrific injury were plastered all over the MMA community and beyond.
Bellator should protect Santos from himself and itself. Just do the right thing and make a public statement that Santos won’t be booked until—and only until—there are solid assurances he’s good to go. You could even share those assurances with the public, along with other details (assuming everyone agrees) about his condition and ongoing course of treatment.
Why is this public recovery time sufficient? Did he suffer any brain damage? Will there be a second opinion? Would Bellator pay for such a thing? Could the doctors at the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, which is running the fighter brain health study that Bellator just donated to, take a look at him?
I don’t know how to suggest a specific course of action here, beyond Santos not fighting in December. If the only one who ends up walking their talk here is Santos, that might lead to more than a PR problem.
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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