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Today in Head Trauma: Gray Maynard Signs 8-Fight Extension, Jens Pulver Unretires AGAIN + More

(Woah, hold on a second, Nate. We both see those tiny Christina Aguilera monsters scurrying around on the canvas, right? Photo via Getty.)

Thanks in part to Joe Rogan’s heartfelt and brutally honest call for UFC heavyweight and close friend Brendan Schaub to retire, head trauma has once again been thrust into the limelight of the MMA blogosphere (along with, you know, that multimillion dollar lawsuit thingy). And honestly, it’s a difficult discussion to have when the people calling for so-and-so’s retirement are the very same who have a good chuckle every time some dude gets felled like a oak tree. If we tune in each weekend with the expectation (and dare I say it, hope) of seeing a fighter get his lights turned off, then who are we to tell them when *we’ve* grown tired of seeing it happen?

Look no further than the case of Gray Maynard, for instance. Just a few years ago, Maynard was considered to be one of the toughest fighters in the lightweight division — a man who was just barely edged by Frankie Edgar after inflicting some trauma of his own on the former champ. In the time since, “The Bully” has dropped four out of his past five contests, with every last one of those losses coming via an increasingly difficult to watch form of TKO.

The cries for Maynard to simply give up on his dream and retire have grown louder with each skull-shattering loss, but the TUF 5 alum has refused to hear them. In a move that is sure to draw the same cringeworthy reaction from those critics, Maynard recently signed an eight fight extension with the UFC that will most certainly account for a couple more black spots on his brain in the not-so-distant future.

After the jump: More details on Maynard’s eight-fight deal. Plus, Pat Barry goes on the defensive (no!), and Jens Pulver unretires again (NOOOO!!!!).

(Woah, hold on a second, Nate. We both see those tiny Christina Aguilera monsters scurrying around on the canvas, right? Photo via Getty.)

But according to the former #1 contender, he’s had all the necessary MRI’s and stuff, so we should all just stop worrying! As he told Bloody Elbow:

I wanted to take a little time off. My last three fights were all TKOs, so I took time off after each bout, just in case. There’s been lots of talk about traumatic head injuries, so I wanted time to heal up. Every time I would talk to Dana, he would have me go get checked out, head to toe with MRIs and all kinds of stuff. I realize that this career won’t last forever. I have a daughter now, too. I have to take care of myself.

Those last two statements, you guys. I just can’t.

Speaking of head trauma, there aren’t many fighters who have suffered more of it in the past 4 years than Jens Pulver, who has retired and unretired no less than 16 times in that span. With his career record ever-nearing the .500 mark, Pulver most recently came out of his retirement over the weekend, announcing that he would be facing the currently unbeaten Fransino Tirta at ONE FC 26 in February. It is a questionable move for the 40-year-old, to put it lightly, but one that fits into the former UFC champion’s “take no prisoners” lifestyle.

While being a smart enough guy to both acknowledge and address our concerns for his health, Pulver told MMAJunkie that, “Life isn’t guaranteed, but you ride that son of a bi-ch until the wheels fall off.”

“That’s the way I look at it,” Pulver continued, “Now, let me find out that I have dementia and then come back and talk to me. Let’s see if I say the same thing then.”

There’s really not much you can say about a man who simply refuses to heed the words of his naysayers, so let’s just hope that it doesn’t take a horrific mental disease in order to finally get Pulver to do so. It seems to be headed that way, though.

Also mentioned in Old Dad’s riveting/depressing latest read was Pat Barry, the former UFC fighter and current kickboxer who has been viciously knocked out in his past 3 performances across both platforms. His most recent bout against Zack Mwekassa at Glory 16 was a particularly tough loss to watch, and was followed by the usual cries for him to retire. Chief among them was Barry’s former training partner Brock Lesnar, who had been calling for Barry to hang up his gloves dating back to his final fights in the UFC.

But “HD” simply isn’t hearing it.

“People tell you, ‘Come on man, you’ve got to stop,’” said Barry to MMAJunkie. “But what do you care? Don’t you want to see people get bludgeoned out there? Don’t you want to see people get high-kicked unconscious? Isn’t that what you’re watching these highlights and stuff for? And yeah, they do want to see that. So why do you suddenly care about me now?”

It takes me back to my opening point, and one we have discussed countless times before. As fans of combat sports, we are inherently drawn to the spectacle of seeing someone get dropped with a head kick, or submitted with a leg lock (unless the person doing the submitting is Rousimar Palhares), etc. It’s why we tune in week after week — to see the most dangerous athletes in the world battle in the ultimate test of technique, heart, or some combination of the two — and simultaneously why we so passionately object when we feel a fighter is being misappropriated, often by their own doing.

But to quote Saccaro, “In an age when athletes are shooting themselves in the chest to preserve their battered brains for study, we have to ask ourselves what combat sports (and even contact sports in general) are worth.”

–J. Jones

Tragically Enough, Junior Maranhao Defends Those Who Failed Him During RFA 14

By Seth Falvo

MMA fighters are supposed to be tough. They’re supposed to Face the Pain, Never Back Down, Go Out on Their Shields, and embody every Gatorade commercial cliche you can think of. They’re supposed to believe that they’re indestructible, partly because they’ve been told their entire lives that they’re damn near invincible.

Which is all to say that most of us weren’t surprised when flyweight Junior Maranhao — despite falling off of his stool between the fourth and fifth rounds of his title fight at RFA 14 and needing his coaches to revive him — made the decision to answer the bell for round five. Professional fighters are rarely the best judges of their own mortality, making objective parties such as coaches, referees and cageside physicians all the more necessary to save a fighter from excessive damage; this makes it all the more disturbing when these parties are as reckless as they were at RFA 14, and when the Wyoming State Board of MMA refused to acknowledge that there even was anything wrong with the way that this match was handled (much to the shock of the Association of Boxing Commissions).

There have already been countless articles scorning the coaches, the referee and the cageside physicians who allowed Junior Maranhao to continue fighting. There have also been just as many articles scorning the Wyoming State Board of MMA for encouraging the exact things that athletic commissions are supposed to protect our sport from. But lost in our collective outrage is perhaps the biggest tragedy to come from this incident: that Junior Maranhao is still willfully ignorant to the fact that he was in any danger at all during RFA 14. In fact, Maranhao has gone as far as to defend the very people who failed him that night.

By Seth Falvo

During the aftermath of the fight, Maranhao offered his version of the events to MMAFighting.com. He chalked the entire situation up to fans overreacting to him clumsily missing his stool when he attempted to sit down; never mind that the video clearly shows he was already sitting down when he collapsed. Maranhao then goes on to offer these quotes:

“I think that the doctors made the right call. I think I would have gone crazy if they had stopped the fight.”

…

“I saw that some people are trying to blame the commission, the promoters or even my coaches, so I’m really upset about it,” he continued. “I want to make clear that nothing happened. It’s a mistake (to blame them), and it can hurt us.”

Before we go any further, let me be clear that I wasn’t expecting Maranhao to call for anyone’s license to be revoked. But to outright refuse to acknowledge that anything dangerous took place that night?

With all due respect to Maranhao, of course he would have been upset by a stoppage. That’s the entire point of having a doctor at cageside: to protect the fighter from taking excessive damage just because the fighter wants to keep competing. The fighters are trained to play Superman when they’re hurt, the doctors are trained to know the dangers of Second Impact Syndrome. Maranhao may have dodged a bullet on Friday night, but the reframing necessary to say that the situation was handled correctly is incredibly unsettling.

As for the argument that his coaches don’t deserve ridicule? If Maranhao insists on believing that his coaches would never put him in harm’s way for their own personal gain, perhaps he should look up “That Part of Muhammad Ali’s Career We Never Talk About.” You know which one: the one when Ali suffered lopsided beat-downs at the hands of Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick — Holmes wound up beating Ali so badly that he actually cried after the fight for Ali – simply because his coaches knew they could still profit off of Ali’s legacy. For what it’s worth, Pat Healy also disagrees with Maranhao on this.

We can — and should — continue to talk about how the failures of leadership on display at RFA 14 could have gotten a fighter killed. But equally important is that the fighters involved at least acknowledge that situations like these are dangerous. We’re all in agreement that the system currently in place in Wyoming is broken, but we can’t actually fix it until the fighters the system is supposed to protect start advocating for themselves.

Human Cockfighting Alert: A Fighter Was Allowed to Continue After Collapsing In His Corner [UPDATED]

(Screencap via Deadpsin)

We’re sure you’ve heard all about it by now, but this issue warrants covering by every MMA media outlet around.

At yesterday’s RFA 14, flyweight fighter Junior Maranhao blacked out in his corner between the fourth and fifth rounds.

Did his corner stop the fight?

No.

Did the doctor stop the fight?

No.

Did the referee stop the fight?

No.

The man fell unconscious on the floor (he was out cold) and the fight was allowed to continue. Here’s a GIF (via Zombie Prophet):

(Screencap via Deadpsin)

We’re sure you’ve heard all about it by now, but this issue warrants covering by every MMA media outlet around.

At yesterday’s RFA 14, flyweight fighter Junior Maranhao blacked out in his corner between the fourth and fifth rounds.

Did his corner stop the fight?

No.

Did the doctor stop the fight?

No.

Did the referee stop the fight?

No.

The man fell unconscious on the floor (he was out cold) and the fight was allowed to continue. Here’s a GIF (via Zombie Prophet):

We have to stop writing such things off as part of MMA’s inherent dangers. Doctors, cornermen, and referees are there to protect the fighters, not send them into the meat grinder. This sentiment was touched on in a Deadspin article recently. We even wrote about it here on CagePotato, saying that the culture of “going out on your shield” is guaranteed to result in disaster.

Is there anything that can be done? It’s beyond CagePotato’s power to revoke licenses, but the Wyoming’s MMA commission can do that. Hopefully they see the error of their ways, lest the unthinkable happen.

UPDATE:

The Wyoming State Board of MMA has issued a statement to Fansided.com. It reads:

Dear Mr. Sanchez,

Thank you for reaching out to the Board. As to your question regarding Mr. Maranhao, he was thoroughly examined by a licensed physician after he fell off his stool between the 4th and 5th round of the RFA event in Cheyenne on April 11. He was also examined by his corner men and the referee. All parties, including Mr.Maranhao, believed and stated unequivocally that Mr. Maranhao was medically safe to and capable of finishing the fight. In fact, he fought well in the last round and lost in a close split decision. He was examined by a licensed physician after the bout as well and again found to have no neurological or other medical issues of concern.

The Wyoming State Board of Mixed Martial Arts stands by our physicians and officials and has the utmost confidence in their ability to assess the medical status of Wyoming contestants. Safety is the Board’s number one priority and all necessary precautions were taken at the April 11 RFA event to ensure that Mr. Maranhao was safe to continue fighting.

Again, thank you for your interest in Wyoming MMA.

This isn’t good enough. It’s far worse than “not good enough,” in fact. I know expecting accountability from an athletic commission is asking a lot, but a fighter collapsing in his corner and being allowed to continue is criminal. Despite what the commission said, there was no thorough examination performed by the doctor. This is what MMA is like in some parts of the country, people.

Why Frank Mir vs. Alistair Overeem Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Happen

(The Mir-Overeem preview segment from ‘Countdown to UFC 169’. Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

By Adam Ackerman

This weekend’s UFC 169 card looks to be an entertaining night for MMA fans, featuring Renan Barao defending his now-official bantamweight championship against Urijah Faber, and a chance to (possibly) see Jose Aldo get a decent stand-up test against Ricardo Lamas. It is the next match up — Frank Mir vs Alistair Overeem — that makes me cringe.

Why do I cringe? Because I fear what the future holds for both of these men. Mir is coming off of three losses, including two by violent TKOs. Overeem is in a similar boat, having been put to sleep in his last two fights. When you look further back, even more red flags can be found. Out of the eight losses that appear on Frank Mir’s MMA record, seven have been by some form of knockout. It gets even worse for Alistair, who has lost by KO or TKO 11 times between his MMA and kickboxing careers.

Based on what we now know about head trauma in MMA, it’s safe to assume that both fighters have suffered at least some level of brain injury, which means they could be in for an incredibly wide array of consequences. Depending on the area of trauma and severity, either fighter could suffer cognitive, physiological, emotional, psychological, and behavioral changes. Basic physical functions like hand-eye coordination can also be affected, making those devastating strikes even harder to avoid. And the damage does not end there.

(The Mir-Overeem preview segment from ‘Countdown to UFC 169′. Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

By Adam Ackerman

Traumatic Brain Injuries have also been linked to a disruption in the ability to create normal levels of hormones like testosterone, and growth hormone. In some cases TBI patients are treated with hormone replacement therapy, and experience positive results. Perhaps this is a factor in both Mir and Overeem having a therapeutic exemption for TRT.

If this were the reason for Mir and Overeem’s hormonal issues — which hasn’t been verified, but is certainly possible — should either of these men be fighting, let alone each other? I am not a professional fighter nor a doctor, but it doesn’t take an expert to understand that if your brain is unable to produce the proper amount of chemicals for you to function normally, due to past damage, you should not be taking part in the same activity that caused the trauma in the first place.

So when do you draw the line, and how many knockout losses is too many? There’s no definite answer, and since every athlete is different, any hard-and-fast rule would seem arbitrary. Should athletic commissions give closer attention and testing to a combatant who has been knocked out five times? If knockouts persist, perhaps a long-term suspension should be handed out. It can’t be safe to keep competing as a fighter after you’ve had your lights turned off ten times — and yet Alistair Overeem is appearing on a UFC pay-per-view this weekend carrying that alarming history.

Certainly someone like Overeem, who suffered his second knockout loss in six months when he was KO’d by Travis Browne in August, would benefit from a long-term suspension. Frank Mir, whose brain had just over a year of rest between his TKO losses to Josh Barnett and Junior Dos Santos, seems to be cutting it close as well.

Brain injuries are not fully understood, but we know that they do not heal like a broken bone, or a torn muscle. Such injuries can take several months or years to heal, in some cases they never do, and in the case of some 50,000 people, they result in death. I just don’t want to see either of these men end up like Muhammad Ali, Freddie Roach, countless NFL players, or Chris Benoit.

In the end, two men who have been knocked out a combined 18 times will attempt to devastatingly punch, kick, knee and elbow each other in the head until the other can no longer take it — two men so unhealthy that they need TRT to function. Will I watch? Sure, with the hope that athletic commissions will begin looking more closely at the effects of brain trauma, and that neurological science continues to reveal how much head trauma is too much.

A Survivor in a Dangerous Game, GSP Finds the Exit Before It’s Too Late

(After 11 years in a sport marked by physical trauma, emotional turmoil, and financial misdealings, St-Pierre is beaten, but not broken. / Photo via Getty)

By Brian J. D’Souza

Last Friday, Georges St-Pierre confirmed what has been suspected since his emotional post-fight speech at UFC 167 — that he is vacating the UFC welterweight title. Some are calling it a temporary hiatus, others see GSP as being permanently retired. Either way, the manner in which these events have transpired is a worthy story in itself.

The key to understanding the way St-Pierre has conducted himself, both inside and outside the Octagon, goes back to his earliest origins growing up in the rural area of St. Isidore, Quebec, Canada:

“I went to a school where it was pretty rough — I’d get my clothes stolen, my cash. And at home life was pretty hard too. I had a difficult childhood,” said St-Pierre to an interviewer in 2006.

The upshot of these challenges translated into the single quality that defines GSP to this day — his relentless desire to please everybody around him. Not only was St-Pierre an absolute perfectionist with respect to his performance as a fighter, but he actively sought to cultivate positive relationships with all of the people he crossed paths with in life.

In a non-corporate environment, that character trait might have gone over better. In the shark tank of pimps, hustlers and thieves who infest the fight game, it made St-Pierre an easy mark for managers who felt entitled to take his money.

(After 11 years in a sport marked by physical trauma, emotional turmoil, and financial misdealings, St-Pierre is beaten, but not broken. / Photo via Getty)

By Brian J. D’Souza

The key to understanding the way St-Pierre has conducted himself, both inside and outside the Octagon, goes back to his earliest origins growing up in the rural area of St. Isidore, Quebec, Canada:

“People try to make money off of me all the time,” St-Pierre told me in a 2011 interview.

TMZ.com broke the story of St-Pierre being forced to pay out $737,066.35 — and counting — to his former manager Shari Spencer. In a similar vein, GSP’s first manager, Stephane Patry, earned some hard cash after St-Pierre settled over Patry’s lawsuit with him.

“Georges St-Pierre has a lot of money, and he could walk away forever if that’s what he chose to do,” said UFC president Dana White during Friday’s conference call where GSP’s departure was announced to the media.

This statement begs the question — while GSP certainly never banked Mayweather money, how much of a hit did St-Pierre take from paying out 20 percent commissions to Patry and Spencer simultaneously? Will the courts mandate that Spencer gets to swallow up another 20 percent of his revenue for a portion of the time period since St-Pierre’s new co-managers, Rodolphe Beaulie and Philippe Lepage, took over in 2011?

There’s always the possibility of the bottom dropping out due to unpaid taxes, an issue that has affected prizefighters throughout different eras from Joe Louis to Nick Diaz. Manny Pacquiao owes the IRS $18 million dollars according to another recently published report by TMZ — this on top of having his accounts frozen in the Philippines. GSP admitted to having tax problems to an interviewer back in 2008, but he’s likely corrected any past oversights.

Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, the UFC welterweight kingpin only seemed to discover just who he was dealing with by the time it was too late to do anything about it. Besides the transgressions from his managers, the UFC was happy to control many aspects of St-Pierre’s commercial deals from owning his video game likeness rights in perpetuity to refusing to allow St-Pierre to use UFC footage in the GSP documentary The Striking Truth. These were raw deals that will cost St-Pierre both in terms of his post-retirement earning potential and his reputation for decades to come.

It’s incredibly suspect that two days before GSP’s retirement announcement, Dana White told MMAFighting.com that St-Pierre was signing autographs at a mall. Was the financial hit the UFC would take from loss of pay-per-view, sponsors, and diminishment of the UFC brand in the eyes of television partners like Fox Sports incentive for the UFC to do everything in the organization’s power to retain GSP as champion? With Cain Velasquez out for a year, Chris Weidman as a new champion needing more build-up and lighter-weight champions not drawing big PPV numbers, St-Pierre’s exit couldn’t come at a worse time for the organization.

The most overlooked aspect of St-Pierre’s decision to retire comes down to risk of further traumatic brain injury (TBI). Tim Marchman of DeadSpin.com provided solid analysis that of the 875 strikes GSP has taken in his career, 412 have come in his last three fights. An athlete doesn’t need to be slurring their words or have a poor memory to be suffering the effects of repeated head trauma; depression, bouts of anger, and mood swings can be among the symptoms of TBI.

Georges St-Pierre’s tremendous desire for public validation of his talents was both his greatest strength as a fighter and his greatest weakness in terms of his personal health. He put it on the line for fans, media, and a promoter who were all just as likely to offer scathing criticism as they were to give him praise.

It’s possible that St-Pierre returns to MMA, just as so many other fighters have returned from retirement. In fact, it’s likely that GSP will go stir-crazy on the sidelines and want to restore his past status. St-Pierre will need a strong network of friends and family to pull him back from the brink — but no amount of external validation will overcome any internal dissonance within his soul.

A final note: Kenny Florian wrote a terrific piece for FoxSports.com praising GSP in the wake of his potential retirement. Florian is no stranger to the issues at play as chronic back problems forced him to announce his retirement in 2012. St-Pierre didn’t just inspire Florian to be his best — GSP was my primary motivation to write Pound for Pound: The Modern Gladiators of Mixed Martial Arts, a book where a behind-the-scenes look at his career was one of the main subjects.

We owe it to Georges St-Pierre to remember his life, career, and legacy as it happened, and not the revisionist or politically correct history that certain stakeholders in MMA might be selling. GSP needs to be remembered exactly as he the person he was: one of the greatest — if not the greatest — MMA fighter of all time.