Pat Downey has been forced to withdraw from his professional MMA debut at Bellator 277 as a result of a skin condition known as ‘red skin syndrome’. The affliction is one that happens as a result of the body suffering from withdrawal when topical steroidal treatment stops. It’s worth noting that this has nothing to do with performance-enhancing drugs, and is solely related to steroidal treatment for existing skin conditions and is actually quite common among those who require the treatments.
Originally, Pat Downey wasn’t aware of what the skin condition was and he was rightly quite concerned about the nature of it. This is what led to him unofficially withdrawing from his fight against Daniel Compton at Bellator 277 which would have been his first professional MMA fight:
“Between this progressively escalating undiagnosed flesh-eating disease [and] recently tearing my my MCL / ankle I’m not sure I’ll be able to make my professional MMA debut April 15th. I have not officially pulled out because 10% of me still remains optimistic [and] believes the other 90% knows competing under these conditions is not allowed nor logical considering these injuries have severely impacted my ability to properly prepare.”
Since then, he’s found out the true cause of his problems thanks to an allergist and has taken the necessary steps toward fixing the issue. It’s still affected his training to such a significant degree that, alongside his torn MCL and ankle, it’s kept him out of the fight regardless. This will be sad news for the fans who have been looking forward to his MMA debut ever since he first signed the contract with Bellator, but it’s good news that he has a solution and will likely still be able to make his debut this year:
“I have stopped using all meds [and] we believe every cream especially cortisone or any other topical/injected oral based steroid is causing this crazy allergic reaction.”
Pat Downey shared the news of his skin condition in a post to his official Instagram account that has since been deleted:
