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One of the quotes I’ve found to be most true in my journey through
life is the following from H.P. Lovecraft: “The oldest and
strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest
kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
While Lovecraft utilized fear in the cosmic sense in his writings
of the Elder Gods and the Old Ones, it rings no less true on the
most human level. When we come across a problem with which we have
no previous experience, panic tends to set in. When it comes down
to it, panic is induced by fear. Fear that we’ll do the wrong
thing. Fear that we might make the situation worse. Perhaps even
fear that we accidentally do the right thing … and will be asked
to replicate the results.
Regardless of how common fear of the unknown is, it came to the UFC
on Saturday night when Raoni
Barcelos went unconscious for reasons yet unknown. In MMA,
we’ve had plenty of scary moments when fighters go unconscious for
reasons we know full well. But when Barcelos went out on a mundane
takedown with no obvious trauma to his head in the process, it
raised a lot of concern among those viewing the incident. Concern
… and fear.Raoni Barcelos’ unexplained collapse brings a frightening
unknown to UFC
While I’ll acknowledge concern is a better word to utilize in this
situation, the fact that no one could immediately give an answer as
to why Barcelos went out and was unresponsive for so long meant
fear was a highly appropriate word in itself. Was it a cardiac
situation? Is it possible Barcelos had a stroke in the middle of
his fight? Is this a career-ending situation? Even worse, is it
life-threatening? After Barcelos was carried off on a stretcher,
all of those were reasonable questions to ask.Questions surround what happened to Barcelos during the Raul
Rosas Jr. fight
For a sport as dangerous as MMA, the UFC has a relatively good
track record in terms of safety. No one has died as an immediate
result of injuries sustained in a UFC fight, but I always want to
throw a “yet” at the end of that sentence. That isn’t to say I’m
blaming the UFC for whatever happened to Barcelos in the cage. He
had fought brilliantly for over 21 minutes up to that point,
clearly winning the fight against a promising Raul Rosas
Jr. All indications were that Barcelos was as healthy as you
can expect a 39-year-old athlete to be. But what happened after it
became apparent something was unexpectedly wrong with Barcelos …
that’s a different story.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know everything medical
personnel were doing with Barcelos after the fight was stopped.
After the instant replays seemed to show Barcelos went out for
unconfirmed reasons, the cameras were kept off him. Were they
performing CPR on him? If they weren’t, shoul