Vicente Luque was on a thrilling winning run when a knockout loss to Geoff Neal caused a life-threatening brain bleed a year ago. In a recent episode of Trocação Franca, Luque revealed the ongoing effects of this serious injury.
“At first they gave me a six-month suspension after the fight. I had small bleeding in my brain, something more serious than usual, but it did not evolve.
How A Brain Bleed Almost Ended Vicente Luque’s UFC Career
I was under observation in the hospital and it didn’t develop to something more serious. They gave me this six-month suspension from fighting but I decided not to do any sparring for six months.
I only trained grappling, wrestling, conditioning, hit pads and things like that. I didn’t do any sparring to really be 100 percent recovered.”
Luque, however, believes the layoff may have done him some good. “I’m very calm, and at the same time I always give my 100 percent to MMA.
I didn’t imagine that one day something like that would happen, but I knew I would be ready if it did. I was calm, but the first couple of days or week, there really was doubt that something — and that did worry me, if I would be able to continue fighting or not because fighting is what I love doing the most.
I’m far from my dream of becoming champion, I want to achieve that. For the first time in my career I had to think that something could come and take everything away from me out of nowhere.
But that turned out to be something positive because it made me look at my technical evolution more seriously, especially in striking. I was going to war for many years, I was brawling too much.
I can take a punch, I’m good and will continue exchanging strikes, but I wasn’t developing my ability the way I could on the feet. To dodge, to defend, to move, things I started to pay more attention to.”
Luque also admitted that his high rate of competition probably didn’t help matters before. “That may have been a mistake I made.
I won’t say a mistake because at the same time it pushed me up a lot in the division. I think it was important at that moment, but today, at the level I am now, I see that I need time between fights to be able to evolve because you’re being studied a lot at this level.
People see who Vicente Luque is ‘and how they can beat him’. I need to reinvent myself, to be training new things, and I need time to do that. I won’t change much in three months.”
