I said “discard”!
When playing career mode, I went to edit my fighters appearance to get him a hair cut. While on “edit appearance”, I decided I might as well see what other presets are available while I’m here to see if any other faces look more like myself. In order to pull up the presets, the game tells you all your physical changes will be reversed to match the preset, which makes sense. However, I figured that I’d be fine to scroll through and look at the presets before having the ability to go back and still have my existing fighter. Upon leaving the presets page, I was asked if I wanted to save or discard my changes, so I pressed discard since I liked the base I had (with edits) more than any other options. However, it did NOT discard my changes and instead treated it as if I pressed select on one of those presets and saved the build, even tho I said I didn’t want to save anything both when leaving the presets menu, and when leaving the edit appearance menu. So now I’m sitting on the “advance to fight” menu with a completely different, unrecognizable fighter standing there.
Luckily, after typing all that I closed the game and turned it back on to find that my original fighter was returned. So everything is good now but keep an eye out for that; if it incorrectly erases your created fighter and replaces it with a preset you planned on just looking at, you’ll probably want to make your you close the game before starting any training, fights, advancing a week, or anything else that might cause a save point.