Abner Mares has to pull out of his fight with Gervonta Davis with a Detached Retina.
“It happened in a sparring session. It happened on Wednesday [Jan. 23]. I got hit in the eye,” said Mares, who wore a patch over his eye during an interview with Kate Abdo that aired on Sunday on “Inside PBC Boxing,” the FS1 news and interview show about Premier Boxing Champions fights and fighters that he co-hosts. “I felt the pain, but I went through it. I still sparred. I came back on Friday [Jan. 25] for another sparring session, I got hit again. It’s a contact sport, and my eye got super red. And it was that Friday and Saturday where I started seeing clouds and just blurred vision, and I told my wife, and my wife was like, ‘You got to get it checked.’ I said, ‘No, I’m good.’
“So, Monday came and I was gonna go to the gym. I had another sparring session ready for Monday. But my wife insisted to go see the doctor. So, she won, and I went to the doctor, a specialist, and he said, ‘Abner, you have a detached retina. You’re not gonna be able to fight.’ … It was really hard for me to hear those words once again. It was devastating.”
“In reality, people didn’t know what I was going through,” said Mares, who pursued the fight, for which he would have to move up another weight class. “They didn’t know the pain I was going through. I’m not that type of person. I’m not that type of fighter. I called out Davis. I wanted him.”
“It’s been a tough week. … I know that I’m going to come back strong after this,” Mares said. “It’s just a matter of healing, resting and doing what the doctors say.”
“My doctor is one of the best, and if he says, ‘Abner, you’re good to go,’ I’m going to up there and continue to become a world champion once again,” Mares said. “And if he says no, I’m ready for retirement. But I honestly feel I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna conquer that and become a world champion once again.”
“I do have a bad elbow, but not that bad to cancel the fight,” Mares said. “I mainly said elbow because I was afraid. I didn’t want people to know about my eye. I said if I tell people about my eye, people are gonna think, ‘That’s it, he’s not fighting anymore, it’s a red flag.’
“I don’t know, I was scared, honestly. I was scared to let the people know that I’m going through this. I don’t want people to see me as handicapped. I don’t want people to feel that I can’t fight anymore, because I know I can. I just wanted to hide it. No one knew. I just recently told my manager and my promoter; no one knew. Only my family members, and it was hard.”