While thankfully we are yet to see a tragedy take place in a Mixed Martial Arts cage in the UK, the same cannot be said about our closest neighbours. Over in the Republic of Ireland, the death of João Carvalho put the sport on the brink of being banned, but ultimately led to the introduction of greater medical provisions across the board
On April 9th 2016, Irish promotion Total Extreme Fighting Championship held its debut event at the National Stadium in Dublin, and opening the main card was a Welterweight bout contested between Charlie Ward, a training partner and close friend of MMA superstar Conor McGregor, and Portuguese fighter João Carvalho. During the third round Ward hit Carvalho with a strong right that sent him reeling backwards against the cage. Carvalho missed with a left hand but was then caught once more by Ward’s right which dropped him to the floor, causing Ward to pounce and begin to put on the ground and pound. Ward hit Carvalho with around 9 unanswered shots to the head before referee Mariusz Domasat stopped the fight to call a TKO victory for Ward who got up to celebrate with the bellowing Irish fans while Carvalho struggled to get to his feet, clearly disorientated. The video of this fight finishing sequence is available on YouTube, but out of respect, I do not think it would be appropriate to share it with you myself.
Carvalho was taken to the medical room where he was conscious and smiling, claiming to feel no headaches or pains from anything other than the damage he had sustained in competition, and the only signs that anything was amiss was that he was feeling tired and his nose had been bleeding since the first round. The on-site doctor ran basic tests which did not pick up anything out of the ordinary, but he did recommend a precautionary CT scan and an ambulance was called for him. Around 10 minutes later he complained of a strong headache, began to feel nauseous and started vomiting, so the medical staff notified Beaumont Hospital of his situation’s urgency and he was rushed to the Richmond intensive care unit for emergency surgery. Doctors did everything they could whilst he was on life support for 48 hours but his machine was eventually turned off on the evening of Monday 11th when nothing more could be done. He was 28 years of age and had two children. A post-mortem revealed that Carvalho died from an acute subdural haemorrhage, or a blood clot on the brain, from blunt force trauma to the head.
Many MMA fans, Ward’s father and even McGregor criticised the referee’s conduct claiming that he should have stopped the fight earlier, but some looking at the situation from outside the sport who have no understanding of what an appropriate MMA stoppage looks like, viewed what happened as Mr Carvalho being ‘legally beaten to death in public’.
Much like in the UK, MMA is not recognised by Sport Ireland and therefore the Irish Mixed Martial Arts Association (IMMAA) cannot act as its official governing body. In the fallout of the tragedy, there was considerable pressure to get the sport banned which led to Sport Ireland putting forward a system of safety guidelines for MMA, with chief executive John Treacy warning: “If they are not followed, I don’t think there is any place for it in Ireland.”
“The countries where we’ve seen the community come together the most is when there’s been some kind of outside threat,” said Isobel Carnwath, Director of Brand, Marketing and Communications for the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF). “So in Ireland, the government has been challenged now to ban or regulate the sport, so the community came together and said, we want to show that we can self-regulate and we want to work with the government to get the sport recognised.”
"There was lots of talk about the sport being closed down or pushed underground, but the overall agreement was that there had to be much more rigorous pre-fight standards."
The reaction from the Irish MMA community was one of unity and was fuelled by a willingness to properly regulate the sport to prevent a tragedy like this from ever occurring again. Key figures such as SBG Ireland head coach John Kavanagh, Professor Dan Healy, a consultant neurologist at the hospital in which Mr Carvalho died, and former UFC athlete Aisling Daly met with Ireland’s Minister of Sport Michael Ring to discuss how to effectively regulate the sport and move towards government recognition. Healy and Daly were already part of Safe MMA Ireland, the Irish branch of the voluntary medical project dedicated to fighter safety which was founded in the UK in 2012 and within a number of months, in conjunction with IMMAA, they had agreed on a stringent set of medical standards which later became known as Safe MMA's M5 standard. Now, through requirement by local councils and venues, all athletes competing at every MMA event in the country must be cleared to compete to the M5 standard. There have since been instances in which shows have been stopped prematurely because they have not been able to prove that they have been keeping to this standard.
“We already had a strong presence over in Ireland,” said Yoni Gottleib, Records Manager for Safe MMA. “There was a lot of fallout understandably from what happened last April and there was lots of talk about the sport being closed down or pushed underground, but the overall agreement was that there had to be much more rigorous pre-fight standards which is the stuff that we deal with. So, they essentially put together a new standard which was endorsed by what became IMMAA, and since then every bout, professional and amateur, have reached different standards which are much higher than what Safe MMA had initially said should be the basic minimum."
A year on from Carvalho’s death, Prof Healy told the Irish Times that the safety standards adopted and put in place by the MMA community had made Ireland: “the safest country in the world to take part in this sport”. As horrific as Mr Carvalho’s death may have been, what cannot be denied is that resulting reaction from the government and the MMA community has been effective, coherent and positive. The sport is still yet to be official recognised by Sport Ireland, but the ball is in motion and most importantly, safety standards have improved drastically.
This significant stride towards regulation and fighter safety poses the question: could a tragedy taking place in a UK MMA bout lead to similar strides? Jude Samuel, VP of Talent Relations for top UK MMA promotion the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts (BAMMA), does not think this would be the case.
“God forbid something like that happens. I think where in Ireland there were some key individuals pushing and changing stuff such as Dr Dan Healy, everybody from Safe MMA, John Kavanagh, some real key individuals that could speak to the Sports Minister. They had that access, we don’t have that access here. It would be a very different approach and very different reaction. If that happened in the UK, MMA wouldn’t recover. Everybody’s already walking on a bit of a knife-edge at the moment because we clearly know it can happen and it happened close to home so it could happen here. It’s very scary that you’re in a sport knowing stuff like that can happen but the promotions put everything in place to make sure the likelihood of that happening goes right down.”