MMA and UFC News

UFC Middleweight Alan Belcher Suffers Detached Retina, May Retire From MMA

UFC middleweight fighter Alan Belcher was recently training in Brazil when he began to lose vision in his right eye.  He immediately flew to the United States and was forced to undergo emergency eye surgery because he had suffered a detached retina.  Belcher withdrew from his scheduled UFC Fight Night 22 bout (Sept. 15) against Demian Maia, which was going to be his first UFC main event.

Doctors tell him that he will never attain a 20/20 vision, but it will definitely improve to something like 20/40 or 20/60.  Nonetheless, Belcher seems like he will never see as good as he once saw before.  The blurriness in his right eye will most likely affect his fighting, which will put him at risk every single time he fights…it’s a risk he may not be willing to take.

From Alan Belcher:

“I had a detached retina, I just lost the vision in my right eye. It just happened all of the sudden, pretty much overnight. I was training in Brazil, messing around there for a few days and had surgery the day after I came home. I think it happened in training but I don’t exactly know when. It’s gonna take a couple of months to heal, to be at its peak, so then I’ll know how much my vision comes back. I lost a lot of my peripheral vision but I got that back right away but everything is blurry and distorted, pretty much like it was before the surgery. [The Doctor] says it’s definitely not gonna get back the same, but at best it’s gonna be something like 20/40, 20/60 vision. There’s gonna be more surgeries probably even at the best case scenario. Worst case is I don’t get any better than this and I’m only working with one eye and then I probably don’t want to risk fighting again with only one eye because if I lose that one I’m gonna be blind. I’m not even thinking about fighting right now. I’m just going to wait a couple of months and see where I’m at. It’s disappointing because I was on a roll and getting really close to a title, but there’s nothing I can do about it, just deal with it. I’ll be back in there if my health allows me to.”

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