MMA Fighter Says He Died in Cage, Was Revived by Paramedics

There was a scary scene at the Legacy Fighting Alliance event Friday night at Arena Theatre in Houston. During a preliminary bout with Charlie Ontiveros, middleweight fighter C.J. Hancock seemingly collapsed and was then swarmed by the LFA 26 medical team.      

According to a post by Hancock on his Facebook page, the sight was every bit as bad as it looked.

"Well I died tonight in the cage," he wrote. "I'm OK. Thanks everyone. I'll reply when I can. My heart stopped, and I had kidney failure. They did CPR and hit me with the EKG twice and brought me back."

While he said he is "unsure why it happened," he mentioned his tough weight cut.

As MMA Fight's Marc Raimondi noted, that combination of factors sounds eerily similar to a situation that occurred at Bellator 149 in February 2016. Dhafir "Dada 5000" Harris suffered a heart attack and kidney failure in the cage during his bout with Kimbo Slice, and he told Shaun Al-Shatti of MMA Fighting the weight cut was a major factor. 

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation oversaw both of those contests.

Weight cutting is a dangerous but common practice in mixed martial arts. Fighters shed tens of pounds through dieting and dehydration ahead of weigh-ins in order to compete in lighter divisions. This can give a profound size advantage to athletes in the cage, but it also poses serious health risks and leads to a number of deaths each year. Just this March, Muay Thai boxer Jordon Coe died from suspected heatstroke while attempting to make weight.

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Though the TDLR, LFA and Hancock avoided tragedy, Hancock isn't looking to push his luck by getting back into the cage again.

"Doc says I shouldn't fight again...I'm broken," he wrote on Facebook. "I still plan on competing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and BJJ superfights when I get better."

This is unlikely to be the last time a fighter sheds a dangerous amount of weight. Unfortunately, the competitive advantages cutting weight provides fighters means these issues are likely to occur again unless action is taken to put stricter controls on the practice.