Jeff Curran on life without head trauma

Jeff Curran, 37, fought 85 times between MMA and boxing, across 17 years. He is now retired due to concerns about head trauma. It began with crushing headaches. He did what every fighter has done – popped advil and scheduled a fight.

Then he went to his physician of some 15 years, to get medical clearance.

At that point, he said, ‘Absolutely no more fighting,’ Curran told Ben Fowlkes for MMAjunkie. I kind of took his advice for once. It was a hard day for me, I won’t lie.

Fowlkes interviewed Curran’s wife, Sarah.

I think it really scared him, to be honest with you, she said. He called me and he was absolutely bawling. I think it was that, before when he retired it was actually his choice. This was more a thing where it had to be done. I don’t think he would have retired if it hadn’t come down to something like this.

It would have just been this cycle for him otherwise. This forced him to retire and think about other things.

The other things includes running Team Curran in Crystal Lake, IL and developing champions like his cousin Bellator MMA featherweight champion Pat Curran. However, Curran believes that a significant portion of the head trauma he suffered came from hard sparring in the gym, and it remains a challenge to not get in there in practice.

But Curran is winning the fight to not fight. Although the headaches have ceased, and are not turning into something worse, like CTE, he no longer spars hard.

In Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven, the Will Munny character says of killing “You take everything he’s got… and everything he’s ever gonna have…” CTE is like that in slow motion – the gradual and irreversible withering of intellect and speech and personality and control.

Curran hopes to compete in a Metamoris, or some grappling tournaments, but he is not getting hit in the head any more.

I’m inspired by watching people train and chase their dreams, he said. I hope that’s enough.