A GoFundMe campaign started by Evangelista ‘Cyborg’ Santos’ ex-wife Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino in the wake of the broken skull he suffered at Bellator 158 on Saturday night has reached it’s target.
‘Cyborg’ suffered one of the most horrific injuries ever seen in the sport at the event in London, when a flying knee from Michael ‘Venom’ Page knocked out the Brazilian veteran and left him with a depressed skull fracture in the middle of his forehead.
His ex-wife, and fellow fighter, ‘Cyborg’ Justino started the GoFundMe campaign shortly afterwards to help out the fighter during his recovery period, with a target of $20,000, and the MMA community has responded quickly to surpass that total in the space of just a few days, with the total at the time of writing now having reached $22,276.
There has been some debate as to whether Bellator will cover the cost of his medical bills, but it’s since emerged that will be the case, and despite his defeat the organization is set to pay him his win bonus on top of his basic salary for the fight.
For his part, ‘Cyborg’ has tried to downplay the incident despite the fact that there are fears that he may never fight again due to the injury.
“I’m all right. Nothing happened.” Santos told Combate. “Everyone is so worried about me. They’re making fundraisers, but I don’t need anything. I’m really fine. He only broke the eggshell, but nothing happened to my brain. Bellator didn’t deny me anything, they’re helping me with everything.”
‘Cyborg’, who’s 38 years-old and has been competing professionally for 19 years, now expects to undergo surgery after returning to the U.S in the coming days.
“I didn’t want to stay in the hospital because I didn’t feel anything. I had no reason to stay there. I left and I will wait a couple of days to return to the United States and I’ll have my surgery there. Nobody needs to worry. Everything is fine.”
