UFC
UFC NEWS: Alan Belcher looking at multiple surgeries, not likely to regain full eyesight
Aug 11, 2010 - 1:55:28 PM UFC NEWS: Alan Belcher looking at multiple surgeries, not likely to regain full eyesight

DISCUSS ALL THIS IN OUR NEW MMATORCH FORUM

...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Alan Belcher was forced to pull out of his UFC Fight Night 22 main event fight with Demian Maia due to a detached retina in his right eye suffered while training in Brazil, and now the middleweight is only worried about whether he'll be able to recover some of the sight in his eye.

"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, cause if I lose that one, then I'm going to be blind," Belcher said in an interview with PureFight (transcribed by MMAFighting.com). "So it's just -- I'm not even really thinking about fighting right now. I'm just going to wait a couple months and see where I'm at. It's disappointing cause I was on a roll and getting close to a title [shot]."

Unfortunately it looks like Belcher will be out for a lengthy period if time, if he's able to return at all.

"[The doctor] says definitely it's not going to get better to the same, but at best, it's going to be something like 20/40, 20/60 vision," Belcher said. "And we could maybe do some more surgeries, laser, on the retina to flatten it out to get rid of the distortedness. Maybe some on my lens to get lasiks cause I'm like going to be really nearsighted where I can't see anything far away and when it gets close I can almost see it. There's probably going to be more surgeries, probably, even in the best case scenario."

Penick's Analysis: It's going to be extremely unfortunate if this forces Belcher out of the sport early. He was just beginning to really make his climb up the ranks in the division, and was set for the biggest fight of his career against Maia in September. Hopefully whatever procedures he needs to undergo will allow for him to start training again and to continue in his career, but issues with eyesight can be very detrimental and if it doesn't get fixed correctly we may lose one of the more promising up and coming fighters. I sincerely hope that doesn't end up being the case.