As he readies himself for the biggest of his brief professional mixed martial arts career, Ryan Dickson has already scored a huge win – beating cancer.
The 23-year-old Burlington, Ont., welterweight steps into the cage Saturday night in St-Jean sur Richelieu, Que., as part of a Challenge MMA 1 card that will be his first fight since a testicular cancer scare in February.
Dickson puts his 5-0 record on the line against Alex Garcia, an 8-1 Dominican who trains out of the famed Tristar Gym in Montreal and has reportedly caught the attention of the UFC to potentially add to its roster. It is Dickson’s dream to one day fight in the UFC.
The cancer was discovered purely by happenstance, although Dickson believes everything happens for a reason. It occurred during a checkup to get his Ontario Athletics Commission fighter’s license renewed before leaving for Brazil for three months to train and possibly fight.
Because he had been feeling rundown, thinking it was a result of overtraining or possibly the effects of a cold, and experiencing pain and a hardening in his groin area, he asked his doctor to examine it. The tests for his fighter’s license do not involve the exact kinds of things that are checked during a routine health examination that would be done for an annual physical. After examining the area, the doctor sent Dickson for an ultrasound which subsequently was enough of a concern to send the fighter to a cancer specialist, who diagnosed the condition as the earliest of the three stages of testicular cancer.
According to the website movember.com, last year some 1,000 new cases of testicular cancer were diagnosed in Canada between the ages of 15-29. Testicular cancer is one of the most curable forms of cancer with a long-term survival rate of 96 per cent. Less than a week after seeing the specialist, Dickson underwent surgery to remove the cancerous growth so it wouldn’t spread. He has received a clean bill of health, but will be tested monthly to make sure the cancer has not returned.
“Because I was leaving for Brazil, I thought I might as well get everything checked out so when I’m down there competing I wouldn’t have to worry about anything,” Dickson told sportsnet.ca. “Fortunately for me, I ended up catching it early. The way things worked out it was for the best. If I wasn’t going to go to Brazil I wouldn’t have got it checked, for sure. I’m stubborn that way. I would have waited until it was too late.”
The recovery process took two months, during which Dickson could not participate in any serious training.
“I was doing what I could as much as I could possibly do, but I’ve been training hard for the last month,” he said. “I feel better than I did before.”
Dickson was contacted to fight Garcia in March, but declined because of the planned trip to Brazil, where he had been a year and a half before. Fortunately for Dickson, Garcia didn’t fight anyone else.
Dickson would like to promote testicular cancer awareness because of what happened to him.
“A lot of guys are pretty stubborn and they don’t want anything checked,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about (testicular cancer), but just listen to your body. Guys don’t want to seem like wimps by going to the doctor prematurely unless something is really wrong. There’s some symptoms for it, but you wouldn’t think twice about them until you actually know something is wrong or you start to feel pain. It’s usually pretty hard to catch it in stage one, but if you’re really aware of yourself and your body you can catch it. I didn’t expect anything like this. People get colds and feel tired and think nothing of that.
“Everybody thinks it won’t happen to them. I thought for sure there was no way it could happen to me because of the way I diet. No one is exempt. Everyone is equal. You don’t know if they are going to catch it or not, so you just have to be proactive in trusting your gut. If you think something is off, it might be for a reason, so go get checked out.”
Dickson has had cancer issues on both sides of his family, so he may have been predisposed to some form of the disease.
He was asked if he took performance-enhancing steroids, which he doesn’t, but is aware of its usage by athletes who do illegally to recover quickly from training and could be putting themselves at risk to develop cancer.
“If I had have been on some kind (of PEDs), I would have been that much further along in the spreading of it and would have had to do chemotherapy and I don’t know if I would have been able to fight this season,” he said. “I know a couple people who have done (PEDs) in the past and they’re starting to have repercussions at an older age that you wouldn’t think of.
“It would have been a pain in the ass to go through chemotherapy from some of the things I’ve read about it,” he added. “It would have been a struggle.”
He beat the disease and now is hoping to beat his next opponent and spread the word about the importance of testing for testicular cancer.
The event takes place at the Arena Isabelle Brasseur in St-Jean sur Richelieu and is scheduled to be headlined by a light-heavyweight bout between Steve Bossé and Caleb Grummet.
