Former UFC and Bellator fighter Maquiel Falcao has died after being stabbed outside a bar in his hometown of Pelotas in Brazil.
The incident is believed to have happened in the early hours of Sunday morning, with Falcao having been found outside a bar with two stab wounds to his stomach at around 3am.
The 40-year-old was rushed to hospital, where he passed away from his injuries shortly afterwards.
Known as ‘Big Rig’, Falcao joined the UFC in 2010 after having compiled a 25-3 (+1nc) record on the regional circuit in Brazil that had included a slew of KO victories.
However, his time in the UFC was to be short-lived despite claiming a unanimous decision win over Gerald Harris in his Octagon debut as just days later Falcao was arrested back in Brazil in relation to a prior assault of a woman at a nightclub back in 2002, leading to his release from the promotion.
Falcao went on to fight for Bellator, winning his first three fights in a row to earn a middleweight title shot, before losing to Alexander Shlemenko by KO in 2013.
Later that year Falcao again hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons after he was involved in a brawl at a gas station in Brazil that resulted in his training partner Kaue Mena being put in a coma and ultimately having to retire from MMA due to the injuries he suffered that night.
Shocking CCTV footage of the incident showed that Falcao had sparked off the trouble when he backhanded a woman he had been arguing with at the counter of the gas station.
That led to friends and relatives of the victim brawling with Falcao and Mena, who was with him at the time. In the chaos that ensued as the fight spilled outside, Mena was knocked out by a man who struck him with a plank of wood, at which point he was repeatedly punched and kicked in the head and body by others despite already being unconscious.
Falcao was released from Bellator after that, but despite his toxic reputations he did go on to fight for other promotions like KSW and Fight Nights Global later in his career.
He then bowed out of the sport in 2019 after a submission loss, following on from multiple TKO and KO defeats prior to that, leaving him with an overall 40-19 (+1nc) record.
