- The Washington Times - Sunday, August 16, 2015

A female MMA fighter said Sunday that she got into the cage earlier this year while 12 weeks pregnant — and won.

Brazilian Kinberly Novaes told SB Nation she only learned she was pregnant while training for a fight next week and was having a terrible time time trying to lose weight to make the contracted 115-pound limit.

Novaes had been scheduled to fight Jocelyn Jones Lybarger on Aug. 21 for the Resurrection Fighting Alliance promotion in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but was advised to have a medical test when she realized she was gaining weight while training — the opposite of what fighters do.

“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,” Novaes told MMAFighting.com. “I was worried because I trained hard, fought, cut weight. I suffered a lot to make weight for my last fight, couldn’t dehydrate properly, and I was already training to fight again next week.”

Novaes said she did the calendar math and realized that she was 12 weeks pregnant on May 17, when she defeated Renata Baldan to win a Brazilian promotions’s strawweight title.

“But the doctor said everything is fine,” she said. The unborn child is a boy.

Bruno Barros, the promoter for Brazilian promotion Noxii, told MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz that Novaes fighting while pregnant a few months ago was his fault.

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

• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.

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