At 43 years old, UFC heavyweight Mark Hunt was recently pulled from his UFC Sydney main event, after he penned an op-ed about his brain health. Now, after going through medical exams, the hard hitting legend has been cleared by physicians to return to fighting.
Mark Hunt disputed the UFC’s decision to pull him from the recent fight card in Australia. However, it were his own words that caused Dana White and the UFC to take action.
In an article he wrote himself, he admitted to having a potential brain injury after the decades of combat he’s been through.
In the article Hunt said, “My body is fucked but my mind is still here. I’ve still got my senses about me and I know what’s right and wrong, which is the main thing. Sometimes I don’t sleep well. You can hear me starting to stutter and slur my words. My memory is not that good anymore. I’ll forget something I did yesterday but I can remember the shit I did years and years ago. That’s just the price I’ve paid – the price of being a fighter. But I’ve fought a lot of drug cheats and copped a lot of punishment from guys who were cheating and that’s not right.”
Now, two-months removed from his self admission, the UFC heavyweight has been cleared by doctors to return to fighting, The news is good timing because the UFC is set to return to Australia in February for UFC 221.
In a new interview with the Daily Telegraph, Hunt’s manager revealed the good news. Stating, “We’ve just had a conference call with the doctors in the States, who gave us the good news. The doctor said Mark scored well above average and that he’s good to compete. We’re just waiting on the UFC to clear him. We’d like to go up against Fabricio (Werdum) and hopefully be in line for a title shot at the back end of 2018.”
No official word from the UFC on the subject has been made at the time of this article, but Hunt will obviously be eyeing a return ASAP. The prize fighter is a fan favorite knockout artist, and he’s been embattled with the UFC in a lawsuit since losing his UFC 200 bout against Brock Lesnar.
