"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."
UFC middleweight Alan Belcher finally gets a spot in a UFC main event as well as his name on the corresponding poster -- only to lose them both after suffering a detached retina while training for his Sept. 15 fight against Demian Maia. "The Talent" tells PureFight.org that he's on the shelf for several months while his eye heals and will likely face multiple surgeries in 2011 to fully correct his vision. If he can't, it may be the end of his promising fight career, illustrating just how dangerous this sport can be both inside and outside the cage.
Get the latest gear
