If you’ve watched a UFC broadcast over the past several years, chances are you’ve seen actor Mel Gibson on your television screens at an event.
The star of such films as Braveheart, Signs, and the Lethal Weapon series is a huge fan of the sport. While discussing the results of a brain scan he underwent on the Joe Rogan Experience, which revealed by the testing agent that Gibson had “the worst case of PTSD I have ever seen,” the longtime actor and director began discussing how he feels bad for fighters competing in MMA and the UFC with the head trauma they deal with.
In fact, there was one example he witnessed live that really hit close to home while attending UFC 266 in Las Vegas and watching the featherweight championship bout between Alexander Volkanovski and Brian Ortega.
“Like, I’m addicted to the UFC, right? I love it, but I know these guys are [dealing with head trauma]… I feel kind of sorry for them,” Gibson told Joe Rogan. “And one of the guys, I knew one of the guys fairly well, and usually I’m pretty immune [to it], but he was in there and he was fighting against Volkanovski — it was Brian Ortega, and he was getting his ass handed to him in one fight.
“He almost got him a couple of times. … But because I knew Brian, it was like my son was in there. I almost started crying, it got to me. I was like, I should probably feel that way about all of these guys but I don’t know them as well.”
Volkanovski went on to win a unanimous decision in a fight that finished at No. 3 in MMA Fighting’s 2021 Fight of the Year voting.
