Issue 101

May 2013

Beating testicular cancer was the only option for Leon Roberts, the family man UK official who refused to allow the killer disease to stop him from returning to MMA’s biggest stage. Nick Peet went to meet him.

Stepping back inside the Octagon in London on February 16th, one man had the universal support of mixed martial arts fans the world over. Whilst bantamweights Vaughan Lee and Motonobu Tezuka naturally had split loyalties, Leon Roberts, the third man inside the cage for the second fight on the UFC on Fuel TV 7 card, knew that everyone was rooting for him. After all, he’s got the text, voicemail and Facebook messages to prove it. 

Back in October 2012, Roberts was one week off from traveling to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to officiate on the UFC 153 card headlined by Anderson Silva against Stephan Bonnar when he was given some life-changing news. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and the specialist wanted to operate, immediately. “Brazil,” Roberts, can now say with a smile, “wasn’t the only thing that was off.” 

In a Fighters Only exclusive, he reveals: “I actually didn’t realize how serious it was until I went to see a specialist after five trips to my own GP (family physician), and plenty of self-diagnosing courtesy of Google. He examined me and said, ‘Right, I need to get that off next week.’ I said, ‘Look, I’ve got a show in Brazil.’ And he said, ‘You’ve got to cancel it.’ It was at that time I realized just how serious it was. 

“Four days after seeing him I was in surgery and I had the tumor removed. It’s called an orchiectomy, when they remove the tumor and the testicle itself. They take the whole lot. They actually cut through the stomach and through the muscle. 

“Being a bit naive, I thought they just go in through the sack and rip it out. But it’s attached up in the stomach so they open up the stomach and there’s like a network of cables. They have to find out which cable is attached to the testicle, then they cut it off and pull it out through the stomach.” 

Six weeks of pain-filled, practically house-bound, recovery – “they compare it to having a Caesarean,” says Roberts – was then followed by courses of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. 

Not ideal for a guy who likes to train a couple of times a week, holds down a full-time job working with troubled youths, and has a young family consisting of two sons – three-year-old Benjamin and 18-month-old Ethan. 

After an intense course of chemotherapy, Roberts then got stuck into weeks of radiotherapy. And whilst he’s still to be given the all-clear, mentally he’s moved on. He says: “I was blessed because I didn’t have as many side effects as some people do, severe vomiting and everything else. 

“The worst thing for me was I had two and a half days of solid hiccups, because one of the side effects of one of the anti-sickness drugs is hiccups. Imagine, two and a half days of hiccuping every two seconds. I didn’t sleep for two and a half days.” 

Ultimately, it was his healthy MMA lifestyle that saved him from the worst of the side effects and aided his recovery. Because he was eating right and has spent years training, his immune system was good and throughout the period he was also dosing up on the echinacea and zinc tablets. 

“I was taking everything I could that I knew would boost the immune system,” he says. “You know, you go on some websites and they say, ‘If you’ve got cancer, eat lots of high-sugar foods like cakes and pastries.’ Come on, man, what’s all that about? The only thing that did change was, before I had cancer, I didn’t eat carbs, I had

a very low carb intake in my diet. But the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy gave me cravings for mashed potato and bread. So I was constantly carbing up, and not burning it off due to the fact the rehab saps your strength. I think I’m the only cancer sufferer that’s actually put on weight. Everyone was like, ‘Oh, you’re looking well.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m looking fat!” 

Incredible support

“I’ve never been aggressive, it’s just not in my nature to be aggressive, but when I got cancer I got aggressive,” Roberts admits. “And I thought there’s no way this is beating me, no way at all. Then I put a thread on Facebook – and I don’t usually put personal stuff on there – but a lot of people were asking me, ‘Why aren’t you doing Brazil? Why aren’t you doing China? Why aren’t you doing the UFC shows?’ So I said, ‘OK, this is what I’ve got.’ And the responses I got just absolutely blew me away.” 

A referee since 2002, Roberts made his Octagon debut at UFC 89 in 2008, and has since gone on to become one of the most consistent and professional officials in mixed martial arts. The sport has taken him across the globe on numerous occasions, yet with a quiet and unassuming character, fans rarely see Leon outside of the Octagon. However, that shy persona didn’t deflect a deluge of support from around the globe. 

He says: “People I’d never met before, people I know, people who I’ve worked with, people in the MMA community all sent messages of support. You know, it came to a stage where I had to stop reading it because I was getting too emotional and I wouldn’t let it get me emotional because I wanted to stay strong. Both my wife and my parents, they were panicking and asking, ‘Is it terminal? What’s going to happen?’ So I was like, ‘Here you are, read this. There’s no way on earth this thing can beat me with all this support.’ 

“It was especially great for my wife, Claire, and my parents to read. And it was really humbling for me too. So many people still look at MMA as thugs in a cage fighting, but I would love everyone to go on my Facebook page and read the comments I got, because it just goes to show you what the MMA community is all about. How tight it is. And I know cancer is one of the words that brings everybody together, but, man, I had no idea how fortunate and blessed I was and how many people actually cared.” 

And on February 16th emotions were at fever pitch – not that you’d likely have noticed from Roberts’ ever-professional performance. He adds: “It was emotional because it was the date in my diary from the very start. I had to get better for that event. It was a light at the end of the tunnel, for me. After my wife and kids, returning to the UFC was a significant goal for me, throughout my recovery. 

“People may say it’s a part-time gig, but it’s not, not for any of us, it’s a lifestyle, and it defines who we are as people. When you’ve been involved in MMA as long as I have, it’s not just something you do, it’s something you love, you are passionate about it, your life is molded around it.” A life that’s got plenty of years left on the clock too.