Marlon Moraes has made the decision to retire from MMA after a tough string of losses.
Moraes (23-10-1 MMA, 5-6 UFC), who has dropped his past four fights, has opted to hang up the gloves and end his career just one day shy of the 15-year anniversary of his professional debut.
Ali Abdelaziz, the longtime manager of Moraes at Dominance MMA, revealed the news to The Underground’s John Morgan on Wednesday, as well a statement from Moraes.
“I want to thank everyone – Sean Shelby, Dana White and the UFC for giving me so many opportunities,” Moraes wrote. “I want to thank my family, my coaches, my manager, everybody who has been around and been part of my career. I’m still gonna be around the sport helping young guys and helping my friends. I also want to say thank you to Mark Henry, Ricardo Almeida, Frankie Edgar and Anderson França.”
Moraes, 33, began his MMA journey with an April 2007 debut in his native Brazil. After some up-and-down results early on, he caught his stride in December 2011. He would go on a 13-fight winning streak that included capturing and defending the WSOF bantamweight title.
After making the move to the UFC in 2017, Moraes would drop his debut to Raphael Assuncao in a controversial split decision. He then went on a four-fight winning streak, that included a violent knockout of Aljamain Sterling and submission of Assuncao in a rematch – to earn a UFC title fight against Henry Cejudo.
The fight with Cejudo would mark the beginning of a downward slide. He suffered a third-round TKO loss in that fight, only to rebound with a controversial split decision over Jose Aldo. He would then go on to suffer knockout losses to Cory Sandhagen, Rob Font, Merab Dvalishvili and Song Yadong.
After the loss to Yadong at UFC Fight Night 203 in March, Moraes chose to retire.