MMA Fighter Kinberly Novaes Wins Fight While 12 Weeks Pregnant — Becomes Strawweight Champion, Defeating Renata Baldan

Over the years since women’s combat became a viable part of the sport of MMA, there have been many unique scenarios that have impacted it is some fashion or form. A positive impact would be Gina Carano marketing women’s MMA through cross-promotion of her past stardom. Carano provided the initial blueprint Ronda Rousey would follow that would make “Rousey” larger than life in MMA. As for an argued negative, Fallon Fox received a lot of backlash for being the first transgender woman to fight in MMA, which brought debates of fairness.

Now, there is news of a situation that may have some impact with women’s MMA, too. Kinberly Novaes recently won the strawweight championship in Noxii, but what is unique about it is the fact she was 12-weeks pregnant at that time.

According to Primeiro Round, through a translation by MMA Fighting, Kinberly Novaes actually learned she was pregnant while preparing for her Resurrection Fighting Alliance (RFA) debut against Jocelyn Jones Lybarger. After signing the agreement for her fight on August 21, 2015, Novaes found it hard to actually get down to 115 pounds. Eventually, Kinberly Novaes found out why.

“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.”

What is amazing is Kinberly Novaes won her last fight against Renata Baldan while she was 12-weeks pregnant (three months). Novaes went from coast-to-coast in her fight to become the strawweight champion after a unanimous decision was made in her favor. Thankfully, nothing bad happened to Novaes (or her baby). She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time of the fight or while trying to cut weight for her next fight. As a matter of fact, Novaes was highly concerned for her baby after finding out she was pregnant.

“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, but the doctor said everything is fine.”

It is great the story has a happy ending. However, one must question how Noxii let Kinberly Novaes fight while pregnant in the first place. Apparently, Bruno Barros, the promoter for Noxii, is taking responsibility for the situation. Apparently, Barros let blood testing for HIV and hepatitis slide, claiming certain fighters didn’t have the time or the money to get them, as reported by Uproxx. If he and Noxii were more adamant with said blood testing, they would have known Novaes was pregnant. Nevertheless, both Barros and Noxii should thank their lucky stars nothing serious happened to Novaes or her baby, because if something did, it would have been a huge problem for the promoter and the promotion.

[Image via Noxii Promotions]