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Maria Jose Favela, Champion In Life | Power Slap 12
MMA Fighter And Cancer Survivor Tries Her Hand At Power Slap March 7 In Las Vegas
As primal as the idea of slap fighting is, it’s largely a mental game.
So, when Maria Favela steps onto the Power Slap stage for the first time on Friday to face fellow newcomer Marisol Ruelas, one has to assume that the Ciudad de Mexico native has survived worse than Ruelas’ left hand to the face.
Literally. Because no matter how tough Ruelas is at The Fontainebleau Las Vegas, she’s not tougher than cancer, and Favela already vanquished that foe.
Not that it was easy, especially when Favela, 3-2 as a pro MMA fighter with her sights on earning a shot in the UFC, got the worst news of her life in July of 2023.
Stage 3 Hodgkin Lymphoma. She was 30 years old. And angry.
“I got mad at the beginning,” said Favela. “I was thinking, why me? I'm an athlete. I don't have addictions. I don't drink, I don't smoke. I'm always in my home or in my gym, feeling well and pursuing a dream. So I didn't know why it had to be me, especially because my grandma died with lung cancer and it became a nightmare for me. It was one of my biggest fears to live through what she lived. And I remember I always say one of my biggest fears is to have cancer and then I ended up fighting it. But before feeling scared, I was really mad.”
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It was an understandable reaction, but instead of resigning herself to a fate she never thought she’d have to deal with, she fought back, using that anger as fuel.
“I was in a fight mode,” she said. “My mind was like I was in a fight; that's what it was all the time. The doctors were my coaches, and I was only saying, yes sir. And if you feel pain, it doesn't matter. You have to do what you have to do.”
Favela did everything she had to in order to beat back the cancer attacking her, and slowly but surely, she was winning the fight. But every day was a struggle, every chemotherapy session draining. And while she had the support of her family, friends and the MMA community, at times that wasn’t enough.
Meanwhile, Jose Mesa Corrales was looking for a story.
The ESPN producer was working in the MMA department and trying to find a compelling tale to tale. He found it, pitched it, and soon he was in Mexico, talking to Favela as she sat in a room getting chemotherapy. Then it became more than a work assignment.
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“We literally fell in love in the chemotherapy room,” Corrales said. “She had no hair. She was somebody different. And that's how we fell in love.”
“When I met him, it was the day of my last chemotherapy session, and he helped me a lot to rebuild myself because when he met me, I was at the lowest of my lowest, physically, mentally, emotionally,” adds Favela. “And I was a hundred percent closed to having a relationship. I only was thinking about healing. I didn't want to be open to anybody because I didn't want to meet with anybody, answering messages or sharing my emotions or nothing. I was like a clam. And when I met him, he was giving me that smile again because I was in a very, very deep depression, thinking, what do I live for? Every time I wake up, I'm in pain. I hate to eat, I can't sleep. All the basic things that humans enjoy, it becomes a nightmare for me. So just the idea of waking up the next day, it was a battle for me. But with him, he had me distracted and thinking how beautiful life it is.”
Today, Jose and Maria are husband and wife. And if you’ve made it this far, you’ll know that yes, she stopped cancer. It was a tough fight, but Favela had too much for it. As for such a comeback, she admits that it was miraculous.
“I think it's a miracle because I was almost stage four,” she said. “I was close to having no cure. And the way that I recovered with no damage on my bones, on my heart or liver, the doctors were so impressed that my body started to heal really, really fast. Four months after I started with chemotherapy, my body was already clean. There was no cancer there, but we had to finish the chemotherapy run because they didn't want it to come back.”
It hasn’t. Now Favela had to get back to the usual fighting, and she did that last September. And while she lost her Invicta FC bout to Maria Djukic, she was back. And she’s not going anywhere. But before she resumes chasing her UFC dream, there’s some Power Slap business to tend to. Needless to say, after all she’s been through, she’s not scared about what may happen against Ruelas.
“For me, the idea of letting somebody slap my face, I think it hurts my ego more than any other thing,” she laughs, and even though you might assume that she’s happy to talk about anything but cancer, that’s not the case.
“Honestly, I like to talk about this because when I was sick, I received a lot of messages about people who were facing the same cancer or same situation, and I like to tell my story and try to give a little bit of hope or try to push the people a little bit more.”
Maria Favela. Champion. In life.