Steve Heath’s Second Comeback
Mike Sloan May 7, 2008
Not too long ago mixed martial artist Steve Heath (Pictures) was hit with a dose of reality
harder than any punch he had ever taken.
He had endured a knee injury at some point in his fighting career, but due to a divorce, a new house and an eventual lack of financial stability, he was unable to treat the knee properly.
Instead he allowed the injury and residual discomfort to linger,
which hindered his performance against Yuki Kondo (Pictures) in their 2004 Pancrase bout.
Kondo easily tapped out Heath with a rear-naked choke, but the loss
was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg for the Cesar Gracie (Pictures) student's problems.
"I had a couple of bad runs in the past few years with knee injuries," Heath said matter-of-factly in a recent interview with Sherdog.com. "It happened [while training] with my little buddy Randy Spence (Pictures), and I ripped my ACL all to hell. I couldn't afford to take off nine months from work, as that was how long [the recovery] was going to take. I wound up taking a little more than a year off from fighting and I had a cadaver put in my knee with a couple of screws."
While Heath was training for a fight after the Kondo loss, one of the screws broke and gouged his knee, causing a bone infection. He felt an annoying discomfort that straddled a badly swollen leg. But since he thought nothing of the situation save for maybe a slight sprain, Heath allowed the infection to spread until he was ravaged by terrible fevers.
Eventually his girlfriend rushed him to the hospital, where physicians performed emergency knee surgery. Had she not taken Heath in, he never would have fought Phil Collins (Pictures) last April and he certainly wouldn't be set to lock horns with Jaime Jara (Pictures) this Friday on the Pure Combat card in Stockton, Calif.
The infection had slowly rotted away the tissue in Heath's knee, and the gangrene had become so severe that Heath's leg nearly had to be amputated.
"Things get put into perspective real quick when the doctor says that you have to have your leg amputated," he said. "Things you thought were important no longer mean anything. The doctor came in and said the gangrene has spread throughout my leg … and the infection is very serious and I need to tell you where it may lead."
Always one to liven up a situation, Heath simply cracked a joke to the man wielding the stethoscope.
"I said to him, ‘Doc, if you gotta saw off my leg at the knee, you better sew on a big, giant horse d---.' He then looked at me and said, ‘I'm not joking with you; you're about to lose your leg.'"
Suddenly the wisecracks turned into grave seriousness, and the treatment began. Two torturous weeks later, Heath was in the clear, though he remained on a stringent rehab and prevention program in which a PICC line for antibiotics was attached to his bicep and ran straight into his heart. About nine months later, he was able to get up and run around like normal.
Heath had staved off the threat of losing his leg. Next he got himself back into fighting shape and finally climbed into the ring against Collins some three years after the Kondo bout. He took care of business, too, choking out Collins in 2:14.
Then, however, he injured the other leg.
Fortunately the injury was nowhere near as severe as the first. There was no threat of amputation, but it was another setback and another series of rehabs.
Now it's been more than a year since Heath submitted Collins in his first comeback. To say he is amped to fight the 17-5 Jara on Friday in a second comeback would be a gross understatement. Preparation with Cesar Gracie (Pictures) and the Diaz brothers has gone well, and Heath knows that now is the time to make a name for himself in a sport he has competed in professionally since 1998. He'd also like to make some money.
"I would like to somehow get back some of the $375,000 I paid to the doctors for my two knee surgeries," he said.
Heath is ready to resume what was a promising career, though he snickers in disbelief at how big the sport has become.
"Back when I was starting out, there were no rules, really, and I'd fight a guy as big as a house," he mused. "I had that awesome fight with Chuck [Liddell], and now there are rounds, weight classes and all these rules. When I used to tell people what I did, they were like, ‘You do what?' Now it seems like everybody is a fighter these days, and all these guys look the same -- trendy tattoos, the shaved heads and the goatee.
"What MMA is today, really, is a way to keep a lot of white trash out of jail," he added with a hearty laugh. "Seriously, the way to keep the jail rates down is to give these guys a job. No disrespect to my opponent, Jaime Jara (Pictures), because he has a ton of tattoos and he's a legitimate full-time fighter. But if you watch that ‘Ultimate Fighter' show, they all look the same and it amuses the hell out of me."
Heath readily admits that fighting isn't the most important aspect of his life. He's a father and works full-time as a supervisor at a bakery plant. Yet he also maintains a passion for the sport that almost took his leg.
"I love to fight," Heath concluded. "I'll fight anybody at anytime. Hell, I'll even fight Chuck again. I don't know too much about Jara, but I do know that the only thing he does is fight and full-time fighters are always hard to fight because, well, that's all they do. I don't know what to expect from Jaime Jara (Pictures) except that I know he'll bring it 100 percent on Friday. Pure Combat has been great to me, and I expect to give them the fight they want."
He had endured a knee injury at some point in his fighting career, but due to a divorce, a new house and an eventual lack of financial stability, he was unable to treat the knee properly.
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"I had a couple of bad runs in the past few years with knee injuries," Heath said matter-of-factly in a recent interview with Sherdog.com. "It happened [while training] with my little buddy Randy Spence (Pictures), and I ripped my ACL all to hell. I couldn't afford to take off nine months from work, as that was how long [the recovery] was going to take. I wound up taking a little more than a year off from fighting and I had a cadaver put in my knee with a couple of screws."
And that's when everything tumbled downhill, hitting every single
rock along the way.
While Heath was training for a fight after the Kondo loss, one of the screws broke and gouged his knee, causing a bone infection. He felt an annoying discomfort that straddled a badly swollen leg. But since he thought nothing of the situation save for maybe a slight sprain, Heath allowed the infection to spread until he was ravaged by terrible fevers.
Eventually his girlfriend rushed him to the hospital, where physicians performed emergency knee surgery. Had she not taken Heath in, he never would have fought Phil Collins (Pictures) last April and he certainly wouldn't be set to lock horns with Jaime Jara (Pictures) this Friday on the Pure Combat card in Stockton, Calif.
The infection had slowly rotted away the tissue in Heath's knee, and the gangrene had become so severe that Heath's leg nearly had to be amputated.
"Things get put into perspective real quick when the doctor says that you have to have your leg amputated," he said. "Things you thought were important no longer mean anything. The doctor came in and said the gangrene has spread throughout my leg … and the infection is very serious and I need to tell you where it may lead."
Always one to liven up a situation, Heath simply cracked a joke to the man wielding the stethoscope.
"I said to him, ‘Doc, if you gotta saw off my leg at the knee, you better sew on a big, giant horse d---.' He then looked at me and said, ‘I'm not joking with you; you're about to lose your leg.'"
Suddenly the wisecracks turned into grave seriousness, and the treatment began. Two torturous weeks later, Heath was in the clear, though he remained on a stringent rehab and prevention program in which a PICC line for antibiotics was attached to his bicep and ran straight into his heart. About nine months later, he was able to get up and run around like normal.
Heath had staved off the threat of losing his leg. Next he got himself back into fighting shape and finally climbed into the ring against Collins some three years after the Kondo bout. He took care of business, too, choking out Collins in 2:14.
Then, however, he injured the other leg.
Fortunately the injury was nowhere near as severe as the first. There was no threat of amputation, but it was another setback and another series of rehabs.
Now it's been more than a year since Heath submitted Collins in his first comeback. To say he is amped to fight the 17-5 Jara on Friday in a second comeback would be a gross understatement. Preparation with Cesar Gracie (Pictures) and the Diaz brothers has gone well, and Heath knows that now is the time to make a name for himself in a sport he has competed in professionally since 1998. He'd also like to make some money.
"I would like to somehow get back some of the $375,000 I paid to the doctors for my two knee surgeries," he said.
Heath is ready to resume what was a promising career, though he snickers in disbelief at how big the sport has become.
"Back when I was starting out, there were no rules, really, and I'd fight a guy as big as a house," he mused. "I had that awesome fight with Chuck [Liddell], and now there are rounds, weight classes and all these rules. When I used to tell people what I did, they were like, ‘You do what?' Now it seems like everybody is a fighter these days, and all these guys look the same -- trendy tattoos, the shaved heads and the goatee.
"What MMA is today, really, is a way to keep a lot of white trash out of jail," he added with a hearty laugh. "Seriously, the way to keep the jail rates down is to give these guys a job. No disrespect to my opponent, Jaime Jara (Pictures), because he has a ton of tattoos and he's a legitimate full-time fighter. But if you watch that ‘Ultimate Fighter' show, they all look the same and it amuses the hell out of me."
Heath readily admits that fighting isn't the most important aspect of his life. He's a father and works full-time as a supervisor at a bakery plant. Yet he also maintains a passion for the sport that almost took his leg.
"I love to fight," Heath concluded. "I'll fight anybody at anytime. Hell, I'll even fight Chuck again. I don't know too much about Jara, but I do know that the only thing he does is fight and full-time fighters are always hard to fight because, well, that's all they do. I don't know what to expect from Jaime Jara (Pictures) except that I know he'll bring it 100 percent on Friday. Pure Combat has been great to me, and I expect to give them the fight they want."
