Geoff Neal was at death’s door not too long ago. The welterweight fighter, gearing up to face Ian Machado Garry, the undefeated UFC welterweight prospect who made headlines recently after fans and Sean Strickland accused his wife of taking advantage of him.

#8 ranked Neal will face #10 ranked Garry at UFC 298 on February 17 in Anaheim, California. While the result of his upcoming bout remains to be seen, he won a battle with death in 2020. The cause of this was not a fight-related injury or complication and was caused by, of all things, a toothache.

How bad was Geoff Neal’s septic episode?

Neal revealed that he was admitted to the ICU for a week due to sepsis, which is a serious medical condition where the body responds improperly to an infection, causing the organs to work poorly. To make matters worse, Neal got diagnosed with COVID-19 also.

However, the doctors felt that he was suffering from something more serious due to the symptoms he was exhibiting. It took him a few days to figure out there was a larger problem that he needed to get checked for.

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Speaking of his condition, the fighter revealed that after a few days in the hospital, he was rushed to the ICU after the infection got into his bloodstream. This caused him to go into septic shock and his organs got affected. However, he was able to pull through, and made a full recovery to successfully resume his UFC career. However, it took some time for the physical and psychological after-effects to subside.

“With sepsis came congestive heart failure. My kidneys shut down so there has been this fear of gassing out, this fear of dying from being too tired, that I’m slowly trying to get over. It kind of hit in the second round, just because it happens. My coach pulled me out of it and it took me over to the third round,” he said. And the 33-year-old thinks that all of this may have been caused by a simple toothache.

Geoff Neal blames it all on a bad tooth

Geoff Neal suspects that the catalyst behind his sepsis was a bad tooth that he kept ignoring. This, according to him, led to the infection that eventually put his life in danger. ‘Handz of Steel’ has made a full recovery now and his upcoming fight against Garry is an opportunity for him to make a splash after his recent glut of form, which has seen him lose the last three of his five fights since 2020.

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“I’m assuming it came from a bad tooth… I was looking it up… and they were like, sepsis could come from an affected tooth. And I had a bad tooth in the back of my mouth that I just completely neglected,” Neal said.

Do you think Neal can beat Garry at their UFC 298 bout? And what do you make of this horrendous account of infection from the welterweight? Let us know in the comments.

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