In just seven weeks' time, Joe Soto will challenge for the Tachi Palace Fights featherweight title and then drop a weight class to compete in a season-five Bellator Fighting Championships bantamweight tournament. It's a ballsy quest, especially considering Soto's yearlong layoff.
It's even gutsier when you consider that Soto's career was nearly cut short by an eye injury that forced surgery and two grueling months of recovery.
Soto, 24, was one of Bellator's first champions. He earn the title by winning the season-one featherweight tournament, which ultimately set up a title fight with season-two tourney victor Joe Warren.
Soto entered the fight undefeated with a 9-0 record (and eight stoppages). But Warren, a world champion Greco-Roman wrestler, tagged him with a knee to the head that set up a TKO victory at Bellator 27. The September 2010 defeat was stinging in more way than one. In addition to blemishing his once-spotless record, Soto soon developed problems with his eyesight.
"A couple weeks later, I started seeing black spots," he told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). "I went to the doctor, and they said, 'You'll need to have emergency surgery tomorrow.'"
Soto, it turns out, tore his retina, and when looking out the corner of his eye, all he saw was darkness. It was a punch to the gut, but the surgery proved successful.
Still, it wasn't exactly an easy recovery.
"After the surgery, what they do is inject a gas bubble in the eye," he said. "It seems like there's water in there, and then if you shake your head, it's like there's water moving around inside your eye. But it's a gas bubble actually. It kind of stops you from seeing real well. It's just real blurry. It's like you're looking through water and glass. That was the worst part.
"But it started going down little by little. It was like halfway at one point, and then it went away, and I started seeing better."
But that was a two-month process, and along the way, he got simple but frustratingly annoying instructions for the first two weeks: "Don't lift your head."
"The worst part about it was for two weeks after the surgery ... they make you keep your head down," he said. "I'm walking around with my head down, going to sleep face first.
"It sucks. Your neck starts cramping. You can't really do anything. You can't look at anyone you're talking to. You can't watch TV. It's pretty miserable."
Back in May, though, doctors gave Soto clearance to continue. Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney was equally ecstatic.
"We're so happy he's back," Rebney said at the time. "He started the whole thing out. He was the first champion we ever crowned."
But rather than easing into competition, Soto is going full throttle. At Friday's Tachi Palace Fights 10 event in Lemoore, Calif., Soto (9-1) challenges dangerous Eddie Yagin (13-4-1) for the organization's vacant featherweight title.
Seven weeks later, he drops a weight class and enters Bellator's season-five bantamweight tournament, which includes Warren, who delivered Soto his first loss and put him on the sidelines with the eye injury.
"He's part of the reason I wanted to drop down," said Soto, who helps kick off the eight-man tourney at Bellator 51 on Sept. 24. "Plus, it was the first tournament I could sign up for. I wanted to get busy right away, and I want to get that rematch."
Soto meets Eduardo Dantas (10-2) in his opening-round matchup, and Warren (7-1) takes on Alexis Vila (9-0). If both are victorious, though, Soto and Warren could meet in the semifinals or finale this fall.
"It's going to be a challenge, but it's something I want to do," Soto of his two upcoming fights.
But for now, he can't look ahead to either Dantas or Warren. The Sept. 24 event isn't even really on his radar. Instead, he has his surgically repaired sights only on Yagin.
"You focus on one fighter at a time," he said. "I'm only worrying about this guy now."
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