Brazilian Strawweight Fights, Wins Title While Pregnant

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Wait, never mind; you haven’t.

Brazilian women’s strawweight Kinberly Novaes was headed for success as she prepared to fight for the first time in Resurrection Fighting Alliance (RFA) this Friday (August 21, 2015), but she unfortunately had to withdraw because she recently found out that she’s pregnant.

Here’s where it gets really interesting, however.

After she was unable to cut weight for the fight and began feeling ill, Novaes finally went to the doctor and was told that she was six months pregnant. That meant that she had fought and won while she was exactly 12 weeks when she obtained the Noxii MMA women’s strawweight title against Renata Baldan on May 17, 2015 according to a report from Primeiro Round.

Novaes soon met up with MMAFighting.com to discuss the bizarre matter, explaining that her baby, who is going to be a boy, is healthy, which is great news that she trained and cut weight while unknowingly pregnant:

“We did a morphology ultrasound last week and the doctor said I’m 24 weeks pregnant, almost six months, and my baby is healthy and strong. I was worried because I trained hard, fought, cut weight. I suffered a lot to make weight for my last fight, couldn’t dehydrate properly, and I was already training to fight again next week, but the doctor said everything is fine.”

With her RFA debut now on hold until at least next year, Novaes described the strange sequence of events that lead to her finding out she was pregnant:

“I’m a little stubborn, I don’t like to go to the doctor. I’ve been feeling sick for a while, colic, headaches and cramps. I was feeling tired recently, couldn’t even run, and it was really tough for me to cut weight. I was cutting weight for my RFA debut, but couldn’t lose weight. I did a stricter diet four weeks before the fight, and I actually gained 2.2 pounds in six days. I was desperate. I realized my belly was hard, so I thought I had some intestine issue. I took laxative and other things, but a guy that does massages for me told me to go to the doctor.”

“I finally decided to go to the hospital, and the doctor immediately asked me if I was pregnant,” she continued. “I insisted I was not, that I had an intestine issue, but he asked for a blood test. One hour later, he told us I was pregnant. I cried a lot, ran out of the hospital, but I realized that was good news. I thought I was sick, but I had a baby instead.”

As for Noxii, a Brazilian promotion that is unregulated by CABMMA, their promoter Bruno Barros took all of the blame for Novaes being allowed to fight while with child, stating the dangerous situation never crossed his mind:

“I didn’t ask for the exam. That’s the truth. I didn’t even think about the possibility of a woman fighting while pregnant, going through a camp and dehydrating and everything.”

While it is a difficult possibility to imagine, a simple set of medical diagnostic testing on his fighters would have revealed that Novaes was fighting with two. Now, however, the 115-pound champion is just glad to know she and her baby aren’t sick or hurt from the fight.