When BKFC flyweight champion Christine Ferea got a call almost a decade ago about participating in a brain health study involving fighters, she was just looking for some quick cash.
At the time, she was struggling to make ends meet, so the promise of an extra few hundred dollars just to get an MRI and some other scans done by the Cleveland Clinic sounded like a great deal. Little did she know that the brain health study provided her with so much insight that she’s remained part of the program ever since, undergoing yearly updates provided by her doctors to ensure she’s still cognitively fit to compete.
“I didn’t know what it was at first, and I went in and they do a brain scan on you, and it lets you know if your cognitive [function] is getting messed up, if your brain is damaged from the hits,” Ferea told MMA Fighting. “The first one is like a two-hour scan, and then every three years they do the two-hour scan, and then I do [another scan] every year.
“They let me know if I’m cognitively declining, if my brain is declining, if there’s brain damage accumulating. They do several cognitive tests, balance, so many different things to make sure [I’m healthy].”
Ferea admits she didn’t really concern herself with long-term health when she first became involved with fighting because she was just doing something that she loved. She also displayed incredible heart and durability during many of her fights across several combat sports, but that also meant she took a lot of damage along the way.
Once she got involved with the brain health study, Ferea started to see the benefits of understanding what effect the repeated blows to the head were having on her. It was a wake-up call that serves as a constant reminder that she can’t fight forever.
“Now I don’t have to wonder,” Ferea explained. “Am I getting messed up? Am I taking too many hits? How am I going to affected down the road? Because I have a meeting with the doctor after every MRI and the cognitive [testing] and all that kind of testing, and then they read the results, and then I meet with him right after. He runs down everything for me, he’ll tell me. I trust him. It’s good not to wonder what I’m doing to my brain every year.
“If I’m starting to decline, I’m quitting. Period. I’m not messing with my brain. If I break bones, if my back hurts, my shoulder, if that hurts I still care about that, but not as much as my brain.”
Ferea’s commitment to the study is so strong that she’s already planning on donating her brain to science after her death because there’s so much information that doctors can only retrieve post-mortem.
In particular, chronic traumatic encephalopathy — better known as CTE — can only be detected in examinations done during an autopsy.
“I definitely will give my brain to the study,” Ferea said. “It’s not like I need to keep it or anyone else needs to keep it.”
While long-term brain health has remained incredibly important to her, especially after getting involved with Cleveland Clinic, Ferea dealt with a situation recently that hit a little too close to home.
Back in May, Ferea was scheduled to face former boxing champion and Bellator veteran Heather Hardy in a BKFC title fight. Just days before they were scheduled to meet, Hardy dropped out of the fight and revealed that her career was likely over due to the amount of head trauma she suffered throughout her career.
“After finally seeing a doctor, he said I’ve had too many concussions,” Hardy said in a sobering social media post. “When you have a concussion, a piece of your brain dies and you never get it back. Imagine that? In 10 years I’ve had too much brain damage. I can’t get any more or else I won’t be able to see. No running, no jogging, no jumping rope, and no getting hit in the head.”
Hearing that served as a harsh reminder to Ferea that no amount of toughness or grit can save you from something as serious as brain damage.
After Hardy made that post, which effectively served as a retirement announcement, Ferea reached out in an attempt to connect her with the same doctors she’s been working with for the better part of the past decade.
“It’s very, very scary,” Ferea said of Hardy’s situation. “I’m the type of person, I have a chin so I can take a lot of damage. I’ll sit there and take it like whatever, it doesn’t affect me. That’s the kind of fighter Heather was. She’ll take a lot of damage because she has a lot of heart and a high pain tolerance. That really puts you in check in terms of being tough and just taking shot.
“You’ve got to be responsible even though you’re playing defense and you can take the hits and stuff like that.”
Now Ferea openly states that her dedication to long-term brain health hasn’t changed the way she fights because that would be a detriment to her career.
That said, the 41-year-old veteran promises if she ever finds out that her cognitive function has been compromised, she’ll retire on the spot.
“You’ve got to have a little bit of that ‘f*ck it’ [attitude] because you can’t go in there too careful,” Ferea said. “If you’re too careful, you’re not going to perform right or you’re going to hesitate. You can get knocked out hesitating.
“If it gets bad, I’m going to stop. I love this with all my heart and I love being champion and I love competing and I love dominating people, but it’s not worth not being able to speak my name or not being able to remember my family and all that.”
