Brazilian MMA Fighter Kinberly Tanaka Novaes fought and won an MMA fight in May 2015, while she was 12 weeks pregnant.

Novaes fought without knowing that she was pregnant. She won a unanimous decision victory in a professional MMA fight against Renata Baldan at Brazilian MMA promotion Noxii Combat.

Brazilian website Primeiroround, Novaes revealed what happened:

After the fight, Novaes went to the hospital and the doctor immediately asked her if she was pregnant. She said that she wasn’t but had some intestine issues. The doctor asked for a blood test. One hour later, he told her the good news: she was pregnant.

Now in August, the baby is fine, Novaes posted on her Facebook yesterday (Translated):

“Good afternoon, guys!
As you know, I should fight next week by RFA: Resurrection Fighting Alliance. But in the last month was feeling very badly in training and with great difficulty to lose weight. It was when I looked for a doctor, with very afraid to find out something wrong in my body, some disease, something that I barrier to fight. Because I knew that my body was not normal, for some time now.

We would like to thank our friends for the gestures of affection, our families for the support, the whole system, which has proved to be with our family, and also to Germany for the opportunity and the secrecy on the subject. Next year I am back to the cages, with more will to win than ever!

We did a morphology ultrasound last week and the doctor said I’m 24 weeks pregnant, almost six months, and my baby is healthy and strong.”

The event promoter of Noxii, Bruno Barros accepts the blame. Noxii is not regulated by the Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission (CABMMA). He told MMAFighting.com:

“I didn’t ask for the exam. That’s the truth. I didn’t even think about the possibility of a woman fighting while pregnant, going through a camp and dehydrating and everything.”

“That was my first event. I asked for HIV and hepatitis tests, but some fighters didn’t send me the results. I didn’t pull them out of the fights because they all wanted to fight. Some fighters claimed they had no money to pay for the tests, others said they didn’t have time to do it, but that’s my fault that I let them fight anyway. But thank God everything is fine with the baby.

 

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