There was a scary scene at the Legacy Fighting Alliance event on Friday night. During a bout with Charlie Ontiveros, middleweight fighter CJ Hancock seemingly collapsed and was then swarmed on by the medical team working the event.
According to Hancock in a post on his Facebook page, the sight was every bit as bad as it looked. “Well I died tonight in the cage,” he said. “I’m okay. Thanks everyone. I’ll reply when I can. My heart stopped, and I had kidney failure, they did CPR and hit me with the EKG twice and brought me back.”
While he went on to state that he is “unsure why it happened,” he also mentioned a tough weight cut. As discussed by MMAFighting.com’s Marc Raimondi, that combination of factors sounds eerily similar to the situation that occurred with Bellator in 2016 where Dhafir “Dada 5000” Harris suffered a heart attack and kidney failure in the cage during a bout with Kimbo Slice, which he states was brought on by a bad weight cut. Both of those contests were overseen by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
Weight cutting is a dangerous, but incredibly common, practice in mixed martial arts which sees fighters shed tens of pounds through dieting and dehydration ahead of a weigh-in in order to compete in lighter divisions. This can give a profound size advantage to athletes in the cage but it also poses multiple serious health risks, and leads to a number of deaths each year, with the most recent example coming in March.
Though the TDLR, LFA and Hancock avoided tragedy, Hancock isn’t looking to push his luck by getting back into the cage again. “Doc says I shouldn’t fight again, I’m broken,” he said on Facebook. “I guess I’ll just be a coach from now on. I still plan on competing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and BJJ superfights when I get better.”
Unfortunately, with how common weight cutting is and how extreme it can get, it’s only a matter of time before a situation like this comes up again. Hopefully fighters, commissions and promotions will take action, and help prevent this from happening again in the future.
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