Charles Oliveira might be approaching his late 30s but he has no plans to announce his retirement from MMA any time soon. It was just a little over 3 years ago that Oliveira was at the top of the mountain as the UFC lightweight world champion, but he’s had a string of mixed results since then. He technically never actually lost the title in the cage, as he was stripped of it when he missed weight for his defense against Justin Gaethje. He went on to win that fight but wasn’t eligible to win the belt due to missing weight, and he hasn’t managed to regain it since.
His next fight for the vacant belt was a submission loss to Islam Makhachev and he’s alternated wins and losses in the four fights after that. The losses have come in an official title-eliminator bout and another title-shot though, so both have been against the very best in the world. Regardless, questions about Oliveira’s retirement have started to surface. Those questions have only increased since his most recent fight announcement, as he will face Rafael Fiziev in the main event of UFC Rio on October 11th. Headlining a card in your home country is probably the dream moment to retire for most fighters, but Oliveira shut it down immediately when asked if it would be his final fight:
“No, no, no, forget it… People are trying to retire me before I want to. I haven’t even thought about retirement. In every interview I’ve done today, all of them asked me about retirement.”
The lightweight division often moves fast and the belt changes hands pretty frequently, with no man ever holding on to it for more than 4 fights. Oliveira has held on to a position in the top 5 despite the ups and downs and is never too far away from a shot at the belt, so it’s understandable that he might not want to stop yet. He even hinted at some big plans for the future himself:
“I have no desire to retire whatsoever. I don’t want to retire. There’s a lot that needs to happen… I’m only 35, there’s a lot still to come… Stop talking about retirement.”
The clip from the interview with Charles Oliveira where he discusses the idea of retirement was uploaded to the official Twitter account of Championship Rounds:
