According to his own statement he passed all the medical tests going into this fight with Cerrone, but is still claiming he is suffering from 'neuological problems' that all those medicals apparently missed. If you don't see why that is a huge red flag for the UFC then you have no sense at all. Who are they to believe, the medical professionals that cleared Diego to fight or Diego's lunatic life partner?
They should have released Diego immediately when he started claiming medical issues that didn't appear in his tests. However, Dana likes him and there is a sense of loyalty there. Naturally the UFC is going to try to protect its business so they offered Diego to sign a waver about his bizarre claims. Diego wouldn't sign and the UFC isn't going to have someone fight for them that is claiming undiagnosed neurological problems.
This story makes sense.
I'm sure loads of fighters develop cte from MMA.
It shouldn't be a secret that combat sports are bad for the health of the participants over the long term.
I don't know who's at fault really.
Is it the fighters who brawl it out and take a lot of damage?
Is it the MMA orgs for allowing people to fight?
Is it the coaches for not telling their trainees it's time to hang it up?
I don't know the answer to that.
What makes sense, to me, is that if fighters were collegiate wrestlers they would have a college degree to fall back on and would be more likely to feel inclined to transition out of mma before they took too much damage.
If the coaches have alternate revenue streams other than their cut of a fighters pay they should theoretically be more inclined to tell them when to hang it up, or to make changes to their game that might compromise the fighter as a source of income to them.
If a retirement plan is set up that fighters can buy into after x amount of fights or something like that which has good returns on investment that's exclusive to fighters that meet certain criteria. It creates incentives for fighters to become whatever that criteria is to get into the retirement plan.
