Neal won the fight via knockout, the first man to stop the Brazilian via strikes, and Luque was diagnosed with a subdural hematoma — a bleed on the brain — that instantly put his career in jeopardy. Luque was medically suspended for a year and had to force himself to break away from his usual pattern of returning to the gym, training, and simply being active, replacing all those familiar elements with rest and a focus on recovery.
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“That changed things completely, and it’s funny because that’s also when I had the encounter with God, started learning more about Jesus, and it changed my perspective,” Luque said. “I am blessed to still do what I love to do, and before that, I didn’t appreciate everything that I had as much as I could have appreciated it.
“I took for granted stepping into the gym and training, getting into fights and having battles, coming out of them, recovering, and fighting again,” added the welterweight standout, who faces off with Joel Alvarez in an electric pairing on Saturday’s main card at Farmasi Arena in Rio de Janeiro. “Now I look at it like, ‘Through all this, God took care of me.’ It was a miracle because most cases, this is not how it ends: most people will have some kind of (lingering effects); they will not be the same after that, and I was fully recovered and back to fighting in a year.
“If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.”
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