UFC bantamweight star Marlon Moraes has announced his retirement from the sport at the age of the 33.
“I want to thank everyone — Sean Shelby, Dana White and the UFC for giving me so many opportunities,” Moraes said in a statement to announce he was hanging up his gloves. “I wanna thank my family, my coaches, my manager, everybody who has been around and been part of my career. I want to say thank you to Mark Henry, Ricardo Almeida, Frankie Edgar, Anderson Franca and Hunter Campbell.
“I’m still gonna be around the sport helping young guys and helping my friends.”
Moraes first made a name for himself in the WSOF promotion, which he was a part of since it’s inception and would go on to rack up a perfect 11-0 record in. Along the way he also won their bantamweight title and successfully defended it five times.
As such there was genuine excitement when Moraes then moved on to sign for the UFC in 2017, but he would go on to lose his promotional debut to Raphael Assuncao, though only by way of a split-decision verdict.
Moraes rebounded strongly from his first loss in six years however as he’d then go on to win four fights in a row, starting with a split decision win over John Dodson, followed by back-to-back KO finishes against Aljamain Sterling and Jimmie Rivera and then gained revenge over Assuncao with a first round guillotine choke stoppage.
Moraes had proved his worth and was handed a title shot opportunity for the vacant 135lb belt against Henry Cejudo, but suffered a third round TKO loss.
A controversially close split-decision win over Jose Aldo got ‘Magic’ back on track, but he has since suffered a troubling four-fight losing streak in which he suffered three TKO losses in a row against Cory Sandhagen, Rob Font and Merab Dvalishvili, and then a first round knockout defeat at the hands of Song Yadong back in March.
That all suggested that Moraes ability to take a punch had rapidly deteriorated in the past couple of years and so despite his obvious talent it seems like a wise decision to call time on his career at this stage.
Moraes bows out of the sport with an overall 23-10-1 career record.
