Mateus Mendonca took a knee to the groin during jiu jitsu training and ended up going into surgery for a fractured penis. He wants you to know it could happen to you too.
Combat sports are dangerous! So dangerous that you should always wear a protective cup over your sensitive bits — even in training.
That last part is often ignored by Brazilian jiu jitsu experts, who don’t like to feel restricted as they flow on the mats. But bad things can happen while training, as former UFC fighter Mateus Mendonca recently learned to his displeasure.
Mendonca has had an up and down 2024. In February he lost his third UFC fight in a row, which resulted in his release. That was bad. He won his first fight back in the minors with a 20 second kneebar. That’s good. But during a training session gone wrong he ‘suffered a blow to the pelvic region and ended up fracturing his penis.’
That’s really bad.
“I went to train jiu-jitsu at my teacher’s gym the day before I returned to Sao Paulo,” Mendonca told AgFight. “During the second roll, [my partner] hit my private parts with his knee when I was trying to pass the guard. I felt an incredible amount of pain and ran to the bathroom. It started to burn. But then the pain went away and I kept going.”
“A month later, training normally without pain, I started to notice some problems. I started to move and there was a lump. So I went to the hospital. When I got there, the doctor did an exam and immediately transferred me to another hospital for surgery.”
“It’s a good idea to warn everyone,” Mendonca said. “All the guys who train jiu-jitsu, grappling, MMA, anything that involves contact: wear a cup to avoid accidents. This had never happened to me. It was the first time and look what happened. I had to have surgery. I had to be out of action for two months.”
Mendonca came into the UFC with a lot of hype off a big Contender Series win in 2022. After three losses and a fractured penis, he’ll have to work hard in 2025 to turn his fortunes around.