The main event between Raul Rosas Jr. and Raoni Barcelos at the UFC Apex ended with a scene that had little to do with a normal finish. Barcelos ended up collapsing at the end of the match.
Dr. Brian Sutterer broke down the footage on his channel, and said the situation called for a far more careful read than a standard knockout.
“Essentially, what you’re dealing with here as a medical provider is an unconscious or a collapsed athlete would be the better way to describe it,” Sutterer said. He noted that the label matters because a collapse can stem from cardiac issues, exhaustion or electrolyte problems, not just a brain injury.
Reviewing the replay, Sutterer said there wasn’t an obvious blow that explained it.
“I would be surprised if everything else he’s taken during this match, that was enough to cause that significant amount of trauma to cause him to be unconscious and seemingly still look unconscious when he was taken off of the octagon on the backboard and off to the hospital.”
He praised the ringside medical response, especially the immediate check for a pulse.
“It’s often the instinct of these ringside physicians, understandably, to think about concussion, brain injury, and just default to brain injury. But you have to be thinking about cardiac here.”
With no chest compressions or defibrillator pads used, Sutterer said cardiac arrest was likely not the cause. However, an underlying arrhythmia tied to exertion couldn’t be fully ruled out early on.
He did flag one gap in the response.
“It would be nice if they were doing a little bit more cervical spine stabilization here, right? When an athlete is not able to respond to you to properly screen their cervical spine, you absolutely have to be thinking about a possible cervical spine injury.”
Sutterer also raised the damage to Barcelos’ eye as a possible factor, explaining that buildup of pressure from orbital trauma can trigger a vagal response that causes someone to pass out temporarily.
But his central concern was more serious.
“If you have a brain bleed, if you have something like a subdural or an epidural hematoma, a subarachnoid hemorrhage where there is bleeding deep in the brain or bleeding from the bridging veins or the arteries that go around the brain, those are things that will continue to build up over the course of a match.”
He added that this scenario would explain the posturing seen as Barcelos was carried out on the backboard, and why a prompt CT scan was the priority.
“I think number one has to be that brain bleed, that brain injury,” Sutterer said. “Prompt CT scan for hopefully quick treatment if that is what they find.”
