Former UFC world champion and BJJ legend Fabricio Werdum has just started to tease a return to professional MMA competition. Although Werdum never officially retired from the sport, he hasn’t actually competed in MMA since his PFL debut in 2021. He fought Renan Ferreira in his first fight of the heavyweight season that year, and Werdum suffered a highly controversial TKO loss. Werdum appealed the loss as he claimed that his opponent had actually tapped just a few moments before the fight was called off, and footage actually supported his claim.
Werdum appealed that loss and had it successfully overturned to a no contest, and was booked to return to the heavyweight season of PFL in his next fight. Unfortunately his hopes of adding a PFL title to his collection were dashed as he was forced to withdraw from his second fight due to injuries suffered in the first. Since then there has been no news on whether or not Werdum was intending to continue fighting for PFL, or if he would retire from the sport altogether now that he was getting further into his 40s.
It appears as though Fabricio Werdum will now be returning to professional MMA competition, although he has been pretty cryptic in his announcement. All he’s confirmed is that he’s signed a new contract and that his training had started, although he did previously challenge Fedor Emelianenko to a rematch. Emelianenko has only competed for Bellator over the last few years, and it’s likely that they would be just one of several major MMA promotions that would love to have a legend like Werdum under contract. It’s easy to imagine that PFL might be interested in having him back, and ONE Championship would probably enjoy having him as part of their growing list of top grapplers.
Fabricio Werdum teased his return to professional MMA competition in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
