CAL ‘PACINO’ Ellenor revealed he has been told to retire due to a brain injury that forced him to pull out of his fight against James Gallagher.

The 28-year-old was due to face “Strabanimal” in the main event at Bellator Dublin on Friday 27 September.

It was announced yesterday that the Sunderland-born “English Gangster” had pulled out of the fight for health reasons – leaving the MMA promotion desperately searching for a replacement opponent to take on Irishman Gallagher, 22.

Mystery surrounded Ellenor’s withdrawal, but the brave North East fighter has now updated his fans on his condition in a heartbreaking video via his Instagram account.

The heartbroken Team Fish Tank grappler explained: “I got a phone call last Wednesday from safe MMA saying that something had flagged up in my brain scans that I’d recently had done. It was something they weren’t happy with and they wanted me to go to a neurologist to do an assessment on it.

“Obviously, I didn’t want to just go to any neurologist and get told ‘no’ straight away as no neurologist thinks it’s a good idea to get shots to the head anyway.

“So I got in contact with one I’d heard was really good and dealt with fighters in similar kind of situations before. I got a train to London and paid the private doctor to assess my scans.

“He looked at my scans and he told me I had a gap in my frontal lobe that wasn’t there previously and that I now had three black spots of damage on the right hand side of my brain.

“He told me that it was basically the start of brain illness and it was not a case of what could happen, it was a case of what will happen.

“His advice was that he doesn’t ever want me to take a shot again and it wouldn’t be a wise move to even continue training, never mind fights.”

Ellenor continued: “Obviously I’m devastated, and I even asked whether I could pay to get his signature on the paper so that I could still fight.

“He told me it didn’t matter whether I got a signature or not as the doctors would still have to see the assessment from my scan and they would not be happy to let me fight because I’m high risk.

“I basically left them telling me to retire. I’ve come home and not known what to do, and I’ve had this whole up-and-down battle since then.

“I was told one minute that it was looking like the fight was going to be off, and then the next someone is telling me that some doctor might be able to sort it out, and it got closer-and-closer and became a nightmare.”

Sun Sport travelled to Sunderland in June for an exclusive sit-down with Ellenor at his gym as he prepared for his “biggest opportunity” in Dublin.

Now that has been taken away from him, the devastated star (8-2) admits he is unsure what the future holds, but he says he was overwhelmed by the support and well-wishes he has received since Bellator confirmed he would not be competing next week.

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