SportsCenter Anchor Stuart Scott, 48, is fighting cancer, for the third time. Scott uses MMA training to restore energy taken from him by chemotherapy. Scott trains at Plus One in West Hartford, CT.
Rich Sandomir has the story for the New York Times.
Inside the mixed martial arts studio, Stuart Scott lifted the black T-shirt that read, Everyday I Fight. Beneath was a footlong scar that bisected the ESPN anchor’s washboard abs.
It’s a sign of life, he said, though it is the spot where cancer surgeons have opened his abdomen three times to remove parts of him.
He has had 58 infusions of chemotherapy, but the drugs have not fully arrested the cancer that struck first in 2007, when his appendix was removed. It returned four years later. And it came back again last year. Each recurrence seems more dire, and yet after each, Scott has returned to his high-profile work at ESPN, ensuring that his private fight has become a public one.
On the job, Scott seems unaffected by three bouts with cancer. His demeanor on SportsCenter is unchanged: excitable, energetic, creative, even a bit wild. But his face looks thin, and his colleagues are concerned.
On the night he returned to Monday Night Countdown last November in Tampa, Fla., Scott received a text from his sister, who calls him the crown prince of their parents’ four children. It included a quotation from Arthur Ashe: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Thin but muscular, Scott uses mixed martial arts and high-intensity cross-training workouts to restore the energy that chemotherapy saps from him.
Dressed all in black for a recent workout, he popped in a mouthpiece inscribed with the initials of his daughters, Sydni, 14, and Taelor, 19, and then walked onto the blue and gray padded floor to face Darin Reisler, the sculptured owner of the gym. For 90 minutes, they battled and sparred.
Despite his weakened condition, Scott is skillful, quick and graceful. His breathing grew labored as the workout progressed, but he was happy to be back. He needs the physical contact, he said, the jolt of competitiveness.
The kicks came next — three in rapid succession. Then Scott leapt and delivered a flying kick at Reisler. You kick like an ox, he told Scott.
Scott and Reisler moved on to chokeholds and arm bars — sometimes both stopped to explain their submissions as if teaching a class — and wrapped up by fighting in a steel cage.
God, that felt good, Scott said as he pulled off his custom-made blue helmet and left the cage.
He was forced to wait five months, until late February, so his abdominal area would not be vulnerable to the kicks, punches and grappling of the Muay Thai and Brazilian jiujitsu he practices. So far, Scott said, his cancer has not spread beyond where it was found. But he would not give a doctor permission to speak about his condition or provide further details.
Scott said that he had continued to be flexible about the course of his chemotherapy, even considering experimental treatments.
We’ve talked about doing a clinical study, he said, which I might do at some point. We’re going to see what happens with this new drug. And I guess I could go back to my old regimen. There is some evidence that it did some help, but chemotherapy is not an exact medical science. I heard an oncologist say that in the world of oncology, two and two doesn’t equal four, it equals five or six or three.
