JRE MMA Show #89 with Rafael Lovato Jr

Three, two... All right. What's up? How are you, brother?

I'm doing great. It's great to be back.

Great to see you, man.

Thank you.

Congratulations on winning the title.

Appreciate that.

Fantastic achievement. I mean, beating Gegard Mousasi, who's, you know, top flight, one of the best in the, in the sport for sure.

Yeah.

And to beat him and win the Bellator middleweight title, that's... Gotta make you feel happy.

It was surreal. It was something else. And (laughs) when you hear the story about everything, um, man, it, it takes it to another level.

Yeah, well this is why you're here. Um, we're here to talk about that, um, and w- just... I guess you should probably just explain what's going on.

Well, um, I guess I'll, I'll just kind of take you through the, the-

Yeah.

... order of events here. Um, you know, uh, that was my 10th fight, fighting for the Bellator title, and, uh, in all my other nine fights previously it was never required for me to get a brain scan done, um, just due to the, to the different states that I was fighting in at the time, the commissions there didn't require it. Um, in the US it's California and New York, and then Europe, um, you know, requires a brain scan. We were originally scheduled to fight, um, in January at The Forum in California, um, the same event that just happened this past Saturday night. Um, and, uh, so we were gonna fight 2019 at The Forum in January, and that fight got postponed. Uh, Mousasi was injured. And we eventually got rescheduled to fight in June in London. Um, so I already had a brain scan scheduled, um, for December, um, to get approved for that fight in January. But, I got the news about the fight getting canceled, um, like the week of that scan, a couple of days before, so I canceled it. I said, "I don't need to go get that done now." Um, and, so fast-forward, you know, I basically stayed in camp the whole year, uh, training, you know, with that fight on my mind, all the way from November when I started the first camp for the fight in January, you know, into the new year, uh, waiting for the, the new date. Um, and it was March that, uh, that I got the word that we were gonna fight in June in London. Um, and so, you know, I was basically training all year and I just picked right back up into camp. And, um, fast-forward, um, on into the very beginning of May, um, I was t- you know, already a good month into, like, the serious camp. Um, and I was just getting ready to fly to Brazil, Curitiba, uh, to get into the, you know, the hardest phase of camp. Uh, I was gonna be there for three weeks. And I had to get my MRI done, you know, and I wanted to get it done before I went to Brazil, uh, just to check it off the list. Um, so this was actually, uh, the week I had, um... I had two good buddies of mine, um, Jake Mapes and Sam Alvey, uh, were in Oklahoma, uh, training with me, and, uh, we had a great week of training. Everything's going really, really well. And, um, and it's Thursday, and so I go get my brain scan done to get that done, um, before I went to Brazil. And I'm in there and, you know, we're... we, we get through the whole process and, uh, the machine is done. Uh, it's not, you know, operating anymore. But they haven't called me out of the room yet, and I could kinda just sense something was going on. Um, so finally they say, "Okay, come on out." And the radiologist, with really no, like, no, uh, candor or, or like, like an easy, soft way of saying it was like, "Dude, uh, have you seen your brain before? Um, there's some stuff in here you need to see." And he, you know, pulls me into the room and shows me on the, on the screen. He's like, pointing out these, uh, you know, look like little balls. Um, uh, obviously it looked like something was wrong. It didn't look like a normal scan, but I'm not... I don't know, you know?