Marcus ‘Buchecha’ Almeida will reportedly be a free agent after his fight at ONE 169 on November 8th, 2024, according to a recent report by MMAFighting. Buchecha is a legendary BJJ competitor and he’s already had a pretty solid start to his professional MMA career at ONE Championship, but now it seems like he might be looking elsewhere. For someone of his pedigree he will likely find that several major MMA promotions would want to sign him but he did also reveal earlier this year that he wanted to return to grappling soon as well, so that’s another factor to take into consideration.
He also revealed that he might not necessarily be leaving ONE Championship just because he’s going to be a free agent:
“This fight will give me leverage, so I’ll focus 100 percent on this fight and then discuss better terms. This is the goal.”
Although the prospect of being a free agent and coming out of that with a much bigger contract must be appealing to Buchecha, he’s also got something more important to think about first. He still has the fight with Amir Aliakbari at ONE 169 and although he’s 4-1 in his MMA career, he is coming off both a loss and a 15-month absence from competition:
“I hope to talk to you again on Saturday and definitely talk about the future, but my goal right now is Friday. It obviously wasn’t my decision but I was in the gym, training and evolving in every aspect as an athlete on the feet, in wrestling, in jiu-jitsu. I feel a much better fighter now than I was last time I entered the ring.”
Ring rust is a real phenomenon of course, and it would be tough for anyone to come back after such a long time away from competition. Buchecha is also coming off a unanimous decision loss to Oumar ‘Reug Reug’ Kane, so the return will be even more challenging. Buchecha clearly sees that loss as more of a strength than a weakness though:
“The actual fight was a great experience. I won’t be a hypocrite and say it was the result I wanted, of course not, but it turned out to be great experience. After that fight, plus the 15 months (of training), it added a lot to my career as a MMA athlete. I learned a lot about a Buchecha I didn’t know. It was good to learn to control my emotions in bad and good situations.”
It’ll be interesting to see how Buchecha fares in his return fight at ONE 169 and with his bargaining power as a free agent on the line, he’ll definitely be giving it his all. Aliakbari is no easy fight though, and he actually has the ideal style to make it a very difficult night for Buchecha. As a former Greco-Roman wrestling world champion he’s going to be almost impossible to take down and his 10 knockout wins in MMA are more than enough to prove that he has devastating power in his hands. If Buchecha does pull the win out of the bag then it’ll be a huge moment for his MMA career and he’ll likely have some very big fights ahead of him.
