Babalu talks MMA's toll on his body/early signs of CTE

[MovinOn]

48 fights over a 16-year career have left Renato Sobral with a ravaged body and mind:

”Today I can’t walk a straight line, I lost sight of my left eye, which is a big price (to pay). I have no balance today, my balance is almost zero. When I’m fighting, when I’m in a jiu-jitsu tournament or in training, it feels that my balance is normal again, but it’s complicated on a daily basis. But the guys that start fighting have to know that the price to pay will come one day. For everyone. People only talk about the good things today, what they have accomplished, what happened, but what about what you’ve lost? What happened to you?

”If someone asked me if I would let my son fight vale tudo, I would say no, I wouldn’t. My daughter? No. I would hope she wouldn’t. I’d rather see her study. My daughter already is on the water polo ‘A’ team of her high school, she competes, but being a professional athlete? Any sport demands a lot from your body and you will have to pay the price in the future.

“You have to fight in pain, fight while injured. You get knocked out in the gym, and you’re still fighting the week after. You have to fight. You can’t say, ‘I won’t fight’. It’s one blow after the other. And I’m [paying the price] now, right? I don’t know if I’ll be able to see my grandkids, enjoy my grandkids in a normal way, because I’m starting to slowly feel the effects.

“I already have [chronic] traumatic encephalopathy, actually. People barely talk about it,” he continued. “You can do a research, [professional fighters] have peaks of depression, we have seizures, you don’t listen that well. I don’t have speaking issues yet, but I lost the eye sight of my left eye, I have osteoarthritis on my entire body. My knee. I have 13 surgeries through my entire body. So, there’s a price (to pay). It’s not in there for free. I don’t even think it’s about glory, because it’s not for enough time.”

Retired Renato Sobral believes he’s showing signs of CTE: ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to see my grandkids’


That's shitty, man. Many of the fighters from the earlier days of the sport made major sacrifices without getting paid much money.

 

[Rambo John J]

bummer

IMO the whole MMA is safer than Boxing for the brain thing is TOTAL BS...it might be just as bad or worse

Makes the poor percentage of Pay for most fighters rather concerning

 

[jimmy boogaloo]

feels bad man. he is quite the hero in my eyes. got to see him fight at cage rage. will never forget Mike Bisping saying he was disappointed that his match with babalu fell through, not least because his unfaded Lancashire accent did wonders with 'babalu', but also Mike had fought maybe one or two fights in cage rage at the time. dodged a fucking bullet there.

but yeah, a true pillar of the early sport, really sorry to hear how tough it has been on him.

 

[Robbie Hart]

@Leigh @ECC170
any recurring injuries from your days that just fuck with you?

 

[ECC170]

@Leigh @ECC170
any recurring injuries from your days that just fuck with you?

mine actually came from beating up a bunch of bikers with with a buddy of mine... Broke my foot punting a dumb mfer that pulled a knife of me... never got it fixed and it pops non stop and sore as fk daily.. might have a lil cte starting from child abuse and years of wrestling and fighting... Only been knocked out in wrestling and been stunned few times in sparring..but we are learning it doesn't take ko blows to add up accumulative damage..

 

[Robbie Hart]

mine actually came from beating up a bunch of bikers with with a buddy of mine... Broke my foot punting a dumb mfer that pulled a knife of me... never got it fixed and it pops non stop and sore as fk daily.. might have a lil cte starting from child abuse and years of wrestling and fighting... Only been knocked out in wrestling and been stunned few times in sparring..but we are learning it doesn't take ko blows to add up accumulative damage..

Lmao that you fought some bikers and fukt them up......

 

[tang]

bummer

IMO the whole MMA is safer than Boxing for the brain thing is TOTAL BS...it might be just as bad or worse

Makes the poor percentage of Pay for most fighters rather concerning

Yup, the significant damage it causes from MMA strikes seem more ... significantly damaging than the accumulation of the punches in boxing.

Chrissakes just look at the way ppl get stiffned up when they get KO’d cold in MMA, that shit looks waaaay more dangerous than punches in bunches to the same spot

 

[tang]

This is sad

I’d give a sad face rating if there was one.

 

[Leigh]

@Leigh @ECC170
any recurring injuries from your days that just fuck with you?

I forget people's names but maybe I'm just getting old LOL. Worst for me is some niggles from strength training. Lower back gets sore and shoulder can twinge. Aside from that, I'm relatively injury free.

 

[Wild]

Worst for me is some niggles from strength training.

This is extremely racist.

 

[Hong Kong Phooey]

loved me some Baba

 

[NHBStriker]

"CTE? Dude - You have nothing to complain about!" -- Somewhere, Brad Kohler is saying this

 

[Onetrickpony]

Shane Carwin looking for Sobral on Reddit

I want to help. I tried to help the UFC and put them together with my Dr. but it fell through. I know they have a program that may help the future fighters but I am with Sobral, the price we paid was too high. I'd love to help you spread the message to athletes. If anyone has his contact number please DM me. Or if you on on here Babalu DM me.

Story time. While Reed Harris is the one who got me my first fight it was Babalu that made me want to compete. In the early days I did like seeing people like Scotty Adams and Severn doing MMA, it was interesting but also a spectacle to me. Aside from being beat up by my older Brothers I had never been in a fight. Never even really used my fist for anything other than what young guys do at that age . Fast forward and I am just hanging onto my Wrestling career. It was probably Y2K or somewhere before 2002. I was wrestling at the School of Mines while getting my Engineering degrees. I was the "assistant" Wrestling coach at the time and there was a big MMA tournament in Denver. Somehow Babalu and his Coaches end up in our Wrestling room. They arrived a week early to get used to the altitude. This little guy and I wrestled all week and he was a total badass and a gentleman. He and his coaches were the very first people ever to see MMA potential in me. He was the first MMA fighter I ever met. They encouraged me to give it a try, to consider it. Babalu won the tournament in Denver and went on to do great things. If not for him I may never have been on this journey. I'd love to thank him and offer my help in any way.

-Carwin


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMA/comments/bjice0/help_me_reach_renato_sobral_free_story_inside/

 

[member 603]

Yup, the significant damage it causes from MMA strikes seem more ... significantly damaging than the accumulation of the punches in boxing.

Chrissakes just look at the way ppl get stiffned up when they get KO’d cold in MMA, that shit looks waaaay more dangerous than punches in bunches to the same spot

Where I see MMA more dangerous than boxing in terms of striking damage, is in the style of strikes.... Heavy leg kicks to the head, or blunt elbow strikes really accumulate the damage. That with guys either being pinned to the cage, or lying on the ground, or worse, being defenseless on the ground after being dropped/stunned by a shot.... That is where the bulk of damage comes into play.

That said, I still do feel that boxing is worse in the sense of 10 counts... A guy gets dropped by a well trained pugilist, already head spinning from a concussive blow, and we give him 8 seconds to show us that he's ok before we send him out to get hit in the head again.

The fact that there's no 8 count stand ups in MMA, and that guys can win fights like Maia or Askren... MMA I think can be safer, however the shin or elbow to the skull makes our strikes potentially more dangerous (we haven't had as many on ring deaths as boxing has).

 

[kneeblock]

Shane Carwin looking for Sobral on Reddit

I want to help. I tried to help the UFC and put them together with my Dr. but it fell through. I know they have a program that may help the future fighters but I am with Sobral, the price we paid was too high. I'd love to help you spread the message to athletes. If anyone has his contact number please DM me. Or if you on on here Babalu DM me.

Story time. While Reed Harris is the one who got me my first fight it was Babalu that made me want to compete. In the early days I did like seeing people like Scotty Adams and Severn doing MMA, it was interesting but also a spectacle to me. Aside from being beat up by my older Brothers I had never been in a fight. Never even really used my fist for anything other than what young guys do at that age . Fast forward and I am just hanging onto my Wrestling career. It was probably Y2K or somewhere before 2002. I was wrestling at the School of Mines while getting my Engineering degrees. I was the "assistant" Wrestling coach at the time and there was a big MMA tournament in Denver. Somehow Babalu and his Coaches end up in our Wrestling room. They arrived a week early to get used to the altitude. This little guy and I wrestled all week and he was a total badass and a gentleman. He and his coaches were the very first people ever to see MMA potential in me. He was the first MMA fighter I ever met. They encouraged me to give it a try, to consider it. Babalu won the tournament in Denver and went on to do great things. If not for him I may never have been on this journey. I'd love to thank him and offer my help in any way.

-Carwin


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMA/comments/bjice0/help_me_reach_renato_sobral_free_story_inside/

That was the IFC Global Domination event which still to this day is one of the best tournaments in MMA history. Babalu went to war that night.