Raoni Barcelos has been released from the hospital after collapsing during his UFC Apex main event against Raul Rosas Jr., but many questions remain about what exactly happened in the cage that night.
Barcelos was on his way to a decision win when he suddenly became unresponsive in the fifth round and the fight was waved off. The 39 year old was rushed to a trauma center and then the hospital where he was released on Tuesday night.
We don’t know exactly what happened to Barcelos, but UFC CEO Dana White
says the promotion does, although he can’t share that kind of health information with the press.
“It was serious, and he pulled out of it, thank God,” White said during a UFC 332 media scrum. “But I can’t talk about his medicals, you know? You guys will have to ask him about that or see if you can set up an interview with him.”
White went on to praise his staff for handling the situation as well as possible.
“The only thing I f–king care about when we produce these shows, from this to [Power] Slap to boxing and jiu jitsu is that all the proper medical testing is done before [the fight], we have the proper [precautions],” he said. “We had six doctors and three ambulances at that fight. And we didn’t send them to Valley Hospital, we sent them to the trauma center. Immediately.”
“That’s the way you have to run a combat sports organization to try to make sure that nobody gets hurt.”
There’s been concerns that Barcelos had a stroke or brain bleed in the cage, but Raoni himself has said he just fainted, nothing more complicated than that. White didn’t close the door on the Brazilian returning to the promotion.
“I don’t wanna make that call until he has more evaluations,” White said.
“It’s f–king horrible to see somebody go through that,” he concluded. “But I’m so thrilled with my team. Hunter [Campbell] jumped in his car and drove behind the ambulance … The team absolutely f–king killed it.”
