Over the weekend, Geoff Neal dropped a lopsided decision to Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson. After the fight however, he shed some light on issues he had that makes his performance a little more impressive.
Neal had been on the shelf for a little more than a year when he competed at UFC Vegas 17. He was riding a seven fight win streak, with victories over the likes of Mike Perry and Niko Price, and was taking a big step-up in competition against Thompson. Unfortunately in the end, he would be unable to win a single round against Wonderboy, losing a clear unanimous decision.
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Geoff Neal Has Been Going Through It
Leading into the fight, it was known that Geoff Neal had been dealing with several serious health issues that had been keeping him on the shelf. Taking to his Instagram, the welterweight revealed that not only did he deal with sepsis, and congestive heart failure just four months before the fight, but he also lost vision in his eye sometime after the first round. That being said, he made it clear that he was making no excuses for his loss.
“I want to take the time to thank all my supporters and friends. I haven’t replied to everyone but just know I love y’all!” Neal wrote. “Not the outcome I wanted but I had fun nonetheless. Some much adversity dealing leading up to this fight.. sepsis, congestive heart failure, 3 of my corners testing positive for covid, with one of them being the general @sayifsaud, but I still made that walk and fought that fight. Couldn’t see out of my right eye for 4 rounds and still managed to hang in there with a guy whose been kicking ass since I was like 9yrs old lol. I don’t know about y’all but I’m proud of me! Shoutout to my teammates and coaches who did everything to get me ready for this moment. And big shout out to @wonderboymma. True definition of a martial artist. Never stop being you my man. And tell your pops I said thanks for the water 😂👊🏾
P.S this is not an excuse @wonderboymma is good af lol”
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Sheesh, that is a lot of serious setbacks for Geoff Neal. Not only did he have the problems before the fight, but he lost sight in one of his eyes, and was missing most of his corner for the contest. Hopefully it will not take him long to heal back up again, and nothing that is going on is too serious. He had to pass medical screenings of some kind to compete, but that is still a lot of seriously concerning problems for him to have.
