Undefeated in his 5+ year professional career, former Legacy FC middleweight champion Rafael Lovato Jr. finally won the Bellator strap by defeating Gegard Mousasi at Bellator 223 last June. However he’s now revealed that medical testing before the bout uncovered a brain condition that has brought his career to a halt.
European regulating body Safe MMA required the brain scan that unearthed the condition in order to sanction the fight. Lovato said it was the first time he’d fought in a region that required fighters to undergo brain scans as part of routine medical testing.
“I could sense something was going on,” Lovato said on the “JRE MMA Show” podcast with Joe Rogan. “The radiologist, with really no candor or an easy or soft way of saying it, was like, ‘Dude, have you seen your brain before? There’s some stuff in here you need to see.’ He pulls me into the room and shows me on the screen, pointing out what looked like little balls. It looked like something was wrong – not a normal scan. But I don’t know – like shades of discoloration. You could see that it wasn’t normal. He didn’t even know what it was at the time.
“I go back and he tells me that he did some research and he believes I have a disease called cavernoma. He hits me with that. I had no idea what cavernoma was. He said, ‘Look, I’m not signing this paper. You need to go see a specialist and get looked at. But as far as I know, you should not fight. You should not be fighting.’”
Lovato continued with his training camp, but said he was “an emotional wreck,” waiting for the decision from Safe MMA as to whether or not he could compete. During training camp, he also suffered a hamstring injury that risked putting him out of competition.
Cavernoma is a hereditary condition that is not immediately life-threatening, nor does it require any type of emergency surgery.
A consultation with a top neurologist in Brazil alleviated some of Lovato’s worries.
“He said, ‘There is no studies that say getting hit in your head is going to make your cavernoma worse or cause you to bleed and something is going to happen,’” Lovato said. “He said, ‘You could bleed, you could be oozing blood at any point in time, little by little. It could become an issue at some point in time. But there is no treatment. We’re not going to do surgery. There’s nothing that’s going to happen until you have symptoms, until you show signs. Because I can’t find any studies that say getting hit in the head is going to make it worse, and because you a normal, healthy, functioning person at this point, I think it’s fine for you to fight. You should continuing doing what you do until it becomes a problem. And if it does become a problem, we’ll go in there and take it out.’”
After reviewing the neurologist’s report, Safe MMA finally sanctioned Lovato to fight. He went on to win the five-round championship bout by majority decision.
However in the weeks following the win, Safe MMA contacted him to say they’d reconsidered their position and believed it had been a mistake to allow the fight to proceed. Lovato recounted the conversation he had with an Irish doctor about the decision.
“He’s very adamant that I should not continue fighting,” Lovato said. “He says it was a mistake that I was able to fight in London and moving forward I will not be approved in Europe again. At this point, Europe is a no.”
Bellator has been kept updated of developments, and worked with Lovato to gather more information about the condition. After consulting with a number of specialists, he says medical opinions are split about whether or not he should continue fighting. A rematch was booked with Mousasi for Bellator 238, but ultimately the California State Athletic Commission pulled the plug.
“I’m not officially retiring. I am indefinitely on the sidelines right now,” Lovato said. “I am actively seeing more doctors and working toward learning more about this. Obviously I want to keep fighting. I still have hope that if I can continue to still see more doctors and get more knowledge.
“This is such a rare and unique thing. No one knows too much. I’m getting some people saying, ‘No. No way.’ Then I’ve got these other specialists and people who have dealt with it that go, ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’ It’s indefinite.”
