After a battle with prostate cancer, Burt Watson is proud to say he’s a survivor. But even more so, he’s proud to be a voice spreading awareness so that others take the test that helped save his life.

It was only after Watson left his 14-year job with the UFC, where he held a busy travel schedule as a site coordinator, that he had some time and decided to take what he calls “the old man test.”

“They did all of my vitals, they did blood work, and they did everything,” Watson told MMAjunkie Radio. “And everything was good.”

A year and a half later, Watson had some down time, and since it’d been a while, he figured he’d do another checkup. This time, however, they asked him to come in to discuss his results. His PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels had gone from less than 1 up to a little more than 5, so they had to conduct a biopsy.

“‘Yuck.’ That was my first thought,’ Watson said. “Because no guy likes do to that biopsy. But I did it. They took the biopsy. They called me back about two weeks later. I went to the office, and he said, ‘OK, here’s what we need to do: There’s chemo, there’s surgery, or there’s radiation.’ And I’m like, ‘For what?’”

There’s no good time to receive a cancer diagnosis. But even for the ever-cheerful Watson, the circumstances were tough.

“I don’t want to spring violins here, because I am still Burt Watson, baby, and I am still rollin’,” Watson said. “But at the time, my brother had just kind of out of nowhere died on us. He had COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), had a case and died. My mother had got a stroke and was sick and was in the hospital.

“This was all last December. So my family was dealing with my brother passing away and my mother having a stroke and in a nursing home. And I went to the doctor and found out that I had cancer. My head was like, ‘Wow, prostate cancer – what the hay.’”

Given everything that was going on, Watson put his own problems on the backburner and decided to wait before letting his family know.

“But what I found out with prostate cancer: No. 1, it’s hereditary,” Watson said. “And No. 2, that it’s prevalent in African-American men. So I had to tell my son.”

This, Watson said, was around January 2017. His mother died a few months later. His three daughters, he said, fould out roughly around June or July; considering they have children, he didn’t want them to get the news around Mother’s Day.

“By that time I had already started my treatment,” Watson said. “I didn’t share it with work, with anybody, because I just couldn’t.”

Watson is now “100 percent a cancer survivor.” But, considering the speed of the disease, he knows he would have been in trouble had it not been for his decision to take the test. Now he’s taking it upon himself to spread the message to not only those most likely to get affected, but everyone around them.”

Here’s a post (via <a href=" "Everybody knows somebody,” Watson said. "And everybody loves somebody. I want to be the person to get the message to them, to touch somebody and let somebody know. Go get tested. Seriously. It takes five minutes – if that. "Prostate cancer is something that men don’t want to go and get checked or get tested. But you do it once, and once you do it, then every year it’s about blood test. You go back and get a blood test.” Watson, who took on an executive role with Alliance MMA after his unexpected departure from the UFC, is now happy to use his outreach in the MMA community that embraced him.

“It’s good to say that (I’m cancer-free),” Watson said. “I’m proud to say it. But I’m even more so, now, to share that message. And to share that message with everybody. And to be a voice for it.

“And I can tell you, I’m going to do that. Because I work with all men – athletes and guys. And we’re mature. Everybody’s not as old as me, but you know what? You want to live to get to be that old. So go get tested.”

Watson has teamed up with the organization “Zero Cancer: The End of Prostate Cancer” to not only share his journey, but also help raise funds to increase awareness. (Find out more at zerocancer.org/burt.)

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