Doctor in the House

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Bentley Syler knows what ails him before he ever sees the doctor. Since birth, the Ultimate Fighting Championship flyweight has had a malformation in his neck that can flare up in training, and he knows what meds he needs to treat it.

Often, though, he finds himself waiting patiently as a doctor offhandedly misdiagnoses him, usually saying he has a swollen lymph node. That is when Syler coyly requests and undergoes an MRI, and there it is, every time: “a big old bone,” Syler calls the protruding tissue. He gets the treatment for which he came and then returns to American Top Team.

“They don’t know that I’m a physician, as well,” said a laughing Syler, who is licensed to practice medicine in his native Bolivia but not yet in the United States, thus the need for a stateside doctor’s prescription. Back at American Top Team, the word is out. Fighters of all stripes seek out Syler, hoping to save on a trip to the emergency clinic.

“Every single time any training’s going down and somebody tweaks something or falls hard on something, splits something open, that’s the first guy we call. ‘Bentley, what do you think of this? Can this be sewn up? What about this?’” American Top Team coach Rian Gittman said. “I recommend every gym have a Bentley Syler.”

Good luck finding one. When he enters the Octagon to face Freddy Serrano at UFC Fight Night “Maia vs. LaFlare” on Saturday in Brazil, the 32-year-old Syler will become the first medical school graduate to fight in the world’s largest mixed martial arts organization.

“I have had to go see doctors here, and the first thing they do is look at me and ask me why I’m fighting or why I’m doing this,” said Syler, who competed on “The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America” in 2014. “They don’t understand the passion for the sport.”

Syler was born in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. His late father, Lee, a Texan and oil rig manager, settled in Bolivia after he met Bentley’s mother while passing through Bolivia en route to a job in Brazil. He stayed at a hotel where his future wife was a receptionist and would sneak down to the lobby and pretend to read, hoping for a chance to strike up a conversation.

His father, who taught him perfect English to compliment his impeccable Spanish, would go off to work for four weeks and be home for two. He made the most of his time at home; there was fishing, hunting and other outdoor adventures for Syler and his kin, many of whom still live on the same block in Santa Cruz.

Syler attended private school, was the top student in his high school class and always had a passion for science. He wanted to study molecular biology and genetics, so he shipped off to Texas A&M University for two years before getting homesick and returning to Bolivia.

“When I went back, the only thing that really fulfilled me was medicine,” Syler said. “That was basically the only career that they had to offer that was kind on the same track.”

He enrolled at the Christian University of Bolivia, where he obtained his PhD in general medicine, graduating in 2011 as a general practitioner after five years of studies and a yearlong internship. He plans to hone in on a specialty, likely sports medicine or pathology, after his MMA career is over.

Fighting has long been a necessity. When Syler was about 10, some kids were giving him a hard time in school, hitting him in the back of the head and then pretending it was not them or hustling him out of his marbles during a game. Fighting to resolve these conflicts was very much an option.

“In Latin America, it’s kind of a different society; you can get into fist fights and get away with it in school,” Syler said. “Being a young kid, I had to learn how to defend myself and how to punch back.”

It was quite a learning curve. The diminutive Syler said he did not hit puberty and gain real strength until he was roughly 15, which of course made him the target of bullies in the first place.

“I always said to myself, ‘When I grow up, when I’m bigger, I’m going to beat these guys up. I’m going to be bigger than them,’” Syler said. “I never grew, I never got any bigger, but I can still beat them.”

When some of Syler’s cousins turned to kickboxing, he went with them to check it out. This was in the mid-1990s, and K-1 was being televised in Bolivia. Syler and his cousins got together to watch Mirko Filipovic, Mark Hunt, Ernesto Hoost, Andy Hug and others. At age 22 or so, he started competing in boxing and kickboxing, around the same time MMA events started popping up in Bolivia.

“They did a big show in La Paz, and we watched it on TV,” Syler said. “We were the active kickboxers at the time, so I kind of thought about what it would be like to really fight for real.”

Syler sought out a local wrestling club, where the guys were also doing submission grappling for fun. He was a bit cocksure about his kickboxing, but that went out the window when he was taken down and submitted quickly. Syler brought along his kickboxing cohorts, and soon Elite Fight was formed. It was one of the first MMA teams in Bolivia and exists to this day.

In his second amateur MMA fight in 2009, Syler faced jiu-jitsu player Jaime Cabrera, who Syler watched slay a much larger opponent in his previous appearance. Syler’s father, who had since divorced from his mother and returned to Texas, made the trip to witness his son win by first-round knockout.

“He was already very sick with emphysema, and a week after that fight, he died,” Syler said. “Once he saw that fight, he told me, ‘Would you like to make it to the UFC?’ And I told him, ‘I don’t know. That’s kind of a long shot.’ And he said, ‘I think you can make it. I think you can do it.’”

Syler returned to the United States in 2010 to train in Florida while preparing for his final medical school exam. His brother, Christopher, a songwriter and composer, was working for Sony and living in Florida at the time, the beginnings of a notable, ongoing career in the Latin music scene.

“He’s big in Mexico,” Syler said. “A lot of the guys that were on the show, the ‘TUF Latin America’ [show], with me, their wives knew him.”

At American Top Team, Syler took up training just as any other student, in awe of the high-profile fighters he would see pass through, like former World Extreme Cagefighting titleholder Mike Thomas Brown, onetime Bellator MMA champion Hector Lombard and Yves Edwards. After about two months, he talked to camp head Ricardo Liborio about training with the pro team and was given the go-ahead after doing well in sparring.

When the UFC announced plans for “The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America,” Syler was quick to fill out an online application. Back in Bolivia, where the UFC Network is popular, a television programmer set up a meeting with the UFC’s Latin market head and expressed interest in seeing Bentley represent the country on the show.

“The last time I went back to Bolivia after the show, it was incredible,” said Syler, who suffered his first lost in the opening round to series finalist Jose Alberto Quinonez. “I walked down the street and people stopped me and wanted a picture or an autograph. To have a Bolivian in the UFC is a big deal for them.”

And for the UFC, having a doctor in the cage is not without its novelty, either.

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Considering his medical training, Sherdog.com opted to ask new UFC flyweight Bentley Syler his thoughts on some hot-button medical issues in MMA.

ON WEIGHT CUTTING: “My personal opinion about weight cutting is that it really shouldn’t exist. I do a lot of weight cutting, but it’s because I have to, given the way it’s all set up; but I still think there are things that they could do to stop weight cutting. The best thing would be to make the weigh-in three hours before the fight, but then what do you do with a guy that doesn’t make weight? I understand that it’s hard for the organization to go that route. It’s kind of complicated. I really haven’t found a sound idea that would be easy and applicable. Perhaps if you could have fighters, get them all together in one place and four hours before the weigh-in make them drink a certain amount of water and watch them so that they don’t do the sauna, they don’t do the hot baths. If you get them together four hours before the weigh-in and you tell them to drink a gallon of water, and if you give them four hours to pee all the extra out, that’s their actual real weight.”

ON PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS: “I’m all for the natural way. The way nature has built us over millions of years is the best way, and it’s proven itself that way through millions of years. If we add anything to it, we’re going to have a good result in the short-term, but what happens in the long-term? Are you willing to give up your health for, say, three or five years of excellence or grandeur in the sport? What are you going to do afterwards? Life is about much more than just fighting.”

ON MEDICAL OVERSIGHTS IN THE FIGHT GAME: “I’ve seen broken noses sometimes just kind of get ignored, and they really need a treatment done on the nose so that you don’t have a deviated septum after that. It could be treated and put back in place and the fighter will have normal breathing afterwards, but sometimes that’s kind of ignored or set to the side. That’s kind of hard to see, but it’s part of life.”