UFC welterweight fighter Thiago ‘Pitbull’ Alves was recently taken off of the fight card due to a brain irregularity found by doctors prior to his upcoming UFC 111 bout against Jon Fitch. Since docs were still uncertain about the tissue formed in his brain, it was best to keep him out of the fight for the safety of the fighter. Although Alves failed a pre-fight CAT Scan, it is still not something to panic about until doctors reveal what it is.
From Malki Kawa of First Round Management:
“You have to assume when there’s a problem with any fighter — with their brain, with their spine or anything to that effect. If there’s a problem, anything can be career-ending. But at this point, I’m not going to speculate, I’m not going to say that’s the case … There hasn’t been anything to say there’s a condition in his brain. There’s just something they see in the [test] and they don’t know what it is and they just want to have him get it checked out. And they don’t want to clear him for a fight and it could be something serious. We’re not panicking at this point and we don’t want anyone to panic either, but we’ll see what happens.”
