Doctors Told Ian McCall He Could Die Before UFC 208
Ian McCall’s troubled path back to the Octagon continues.
Since his last Octagon appearance, a 2015 unanimous decision loss to John Lineker, McCall has had six different match-ups fall through due to various reasons. It looked as though we’d finally see the former flyweight title challenger return to fighting action at UFC 208 when his originally planned opponent, Neil Seery, was replaced by UFC newcomer Jarred Brooks.
The day of the fight, however, McCall was unfortunately pulled from the bout after he fell ill and was hospitalized for gastrointestinal issues. ”Uncle Creepy’ detailed the whole ordeal leading up to his hospitalization during a recent appearance of Joe Rogan‘s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (quotes via MMA Fighting):
“I’ve never made weight that easy in my entire career. You ask anybody, usually you stop drinking water 24 hours out from weigh-ins. I cut weight Thursday night and it was going so well that I had five glasses of ice water throughout the night. So then I figured I could eat a little bit. So I tried to eat a little bit of salad and I threw that up. But I figured that was just the dressing or something messing my stomach up. So I had at least a cup of almonds, about five cups of water, I cut the rest in the morning and then when I was trying to gain weight back my body wouldn’t. I couldn’t hold on to anything. I kept throwing up everything…
“By the next morning, I had still only gained five pounds. Everything I tried to eat, I threw up. And I was throwing up in front of all the other fighters. Every single chance we ended up having to be in a group in public, I ended up f**king throwing up.”
McCall pleaded with UFC officials and doctors to let him fight regardless of the illness, but they wouldn’t budge. For a moment it looked as though McCall’s life could be on the line and in need of gallbladder surgery. After further evaluation, however, the situation turned out not to be as dire as originally thought:
“I asked them, I’m like. ‘Listen, just let me fight…’ And they looked at me like, ‘No dude, you need to go to the hospital.’ Then they were gonna do emergency gallbladder surgery which they didn’t have to do thank god. This whole thing scared the s**t out of me. When the doctor says, ‘Oh well you could die, you never know,’ I’m like, what the f**k do you mean you never know?”
Doctors first believed that McCall could be suffering from the effects of gall stones, but after more advanced testing that theory was ruled out. Tests are still being run to try and determine what exactly went wrong with McCall, who was finally able to hold food down for the first time since his weight cut just last week:
“[My gallbladder] was super shrunk – contracted. I guess [from the dehydration]. And then they saw shadowing and some other stuff [on the tests] and they thought I had gall stones… Then they did a more advanced version of the ultrasound and they didn’t see anything so they didn’t have to do [surgery]. So basically we’re just running tests, been running tests all week.
“I’m still skinny. I went home a day later than I was supposed to go home and I was still under 135 pounds – 132 pounds. I wasn’t able to hold food down until Tuesday. My body just f**kin’ failed me.”
Do you think we’ll ever see ‘Uncle Creepy’ fight again?
