One of the stranger medical incidents of 2020 in the UFC actually had nothing to do with with Covid-19, for once. While waiting to come out for his fight with Kevin Holland at UFC Vegas 5 back in August, Trevin Giles suddenly fainted. It scrapped the bout on the doomed card (which only ended up having seven fights), and Giles was transported to the hospital and held overnight.
Luckily, it turned out to be nothing too serious and Giles was given a clean bill of health the next day. But what actually happened that night?
Giles, while speaking to MMA Junkie, explained that his heart actually stopped for a brief period of time:
“Apparently something weird was going on with my heart that they saw,” Giles said. “I ended up getting transported. They looked at me for a little bit. Actually, while I was in (the hospital), I was talking to one of my cornermen. He was there sitting there next to me. We were just having a casual conversation and one of the nurses was looking at the monitor. Apparently, from what she said, as I was talking to him, my heart stopped for a longer period of time than usual.”
While that sounds very scary, apparently it’s not that uncommon according to the medical professionals that dealt with him:
“He said it happens to some people,” Giles said. “For some reason mine just lasted a lot longer than other people. They decided to keep me in the hospital overnight to monitor me. They said it happened a couple of times while I slept, too. They believe something may have happened where my heart rate probably dropped, and it caused me to pass out.”
The 28-year-old Giles (12-2, 3-2 UFC) believes that it’s going to be all good going forward though, since this the first time he’s ever had any issues like this:
“I’m confident that it’s an isolated incident,” Giles said. “I haven’t had any issues training or – that’s the only time that’s happened to me. It was definitely just some extremely poor timing. No, I haven’t had any issues lately at all. … I’ve never had these kinds of issues before. All my tests and everything came back good. It was just a weird thing, apparently.”
Giles will step back into the cage this weekend, where he’ll meet Bevon Lewis.
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