Amanda Ribas was TKO’d by an elbow strike in the second round of her fight with Tabatha Ricci at UFC On ABC 9 last weekend, but several days later Ribas’ camp are hailing this tough loss as the best possible outcome after it’s helped doctors diagnose serious health issues she’s been dealing with.
To help explain this puzzling story we have to rewind back to June of 2023 when Ribas fell victim to another TKO loss via elbows and punches against Maycee Barber.
The damage Ribas suffered that night led to her having a metal plate inserted into her face, and just five months later she was back in action against Luana Pinheiro, getting back to winning ways via a TKO finish in the third round.
However, after that fight Ribas began to suffer from a number of health problems, including being in a great deal of pain, feinting and having seizures, and despite seeking medical help the route cause of her problems weren’t discovered.
Ribas has continued to fight on regardless, but suffered three losses in a row in the process, including Saturday’s TKO loss to Ricci.
The good news though is that the elbow strike that stopped her at the weekend led to doctor’s finally realizing that the root cause of Ribas’ health problems over the past couple of years is the metal plate, which they now believe initially became dislocated during her fight with Pinheiro.
“The old plate was dislocated in the Luana Pinheiro fight, and Amanda was experiencing faints, severe pain and even seizures [since],” Ribas’ father Marcelo told mmafighting.com. “She almost couldn’t train since the Luana fight.”
By all accounts Ribas has suffered a lot since then, but now everyone is just relieved that they now finally have answers as to what caused it.
“[Amanda] was doing psychiatric and psychological treatment thinking that was [the problem],” Marcelo said. “And if it wasn’t for the elbow, maybe we wouldn’t have found out. It’s God, brother. Thank God we discovered what was causing the pains, faints and seizures since the Luana fight.”
It seems that Ricci’s elbow strike dislodged the plate enough that Ribas’ prior symptoms have gone, and so now the plan is to underdo another surgery to re-secure the plate, but hopefully this time avoid the issues she experienced afterward last time around.
“She’s not in pain anymore,” Marcelo said. “She felt the worst pain in the world on the trigeminal nerve, and the worse is over.”
