Edson Barboza didn’t just wake up one day and decide he was done with MMA. It turns out that by the time he walked away from the sport at UFC 330 this past Saturday, the Brazilian legend had already been debating retirement for years, and it all stemmed from one brutal night that changed everything: his 2024 fight against Lerone Murphy.
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‘Junior’ faced Murphy for five rounds in the featherweight main event, taking a devastating 220 significant strikes against Barboza’s mere 79. The fight resulted in a unanimous decision loss for the Brazilian. However, the thrashing wasn’t the only thing that remained with him. Speaking with Ariel Helwani, the 40-year-old revealed that the severe injury to his right eye sustained during the battle pushed him to reconsider his career and future in MMA.
“I was talking to my wife a long time, you know?” he admitted. “Besides my fight against Murphy in the main event at the 145, I had a really bad injury in my right eye, and I start thinking about it. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I wanna do this for long, long time because I have a bad injury in my eye. I can’t see with my right eye.’
“And I start thinking about. That’s when I started thinking about. But for the retirement, from when I signed for my last fight. It’s crazy. Like I said, that when I start think about retirement, because this has happened in my fight against Murphy. It’s a main event. I have a… I don’t see anymore with my right eye. I see nothing coming, you know, from outside. And I do two surgeries. I did surgery twice.”
As he revealed, the injury also made returning to training extremely difficult because he had spent most of his career fighting with vision in both eyes.
“I have a hard time to, to back to training, you know,” he continued. “Because it’s super hard. I always see with the both eye. Imagine you start training with only one eye. It’s not easy. I have a hard time. You see last two fight, I don’t feel 100%.
“It’s crazy. I don’t, don’t see everything… black. I see, like, a couple flashes in my right eye.”
Barboza explained that his vision fluctuates. On some days he can see slightly better, but on others, he sees nearly nothing.
Despite this, ‘Junior’ was medically cleared to continue fighting, which will come as a surprise to many given that Sharaputdin Magomedov is banned from fighting in the United States due to his partial blindness.
“I’m cleared because… I don’t know,” he added. “The, the medical say that I’m cleared- You’re good to fight because I think the most important, I say I want to fight, you know? And I signed it. They say if anything happens, my fault. The doctor is the best. I love my eye doctor. He give me a big support, yeah.
“He (The Doctor) say maybe (on his eye getting healed). It’s crazy because sometimes I feel a little better. I start see a little bit. Some days that I don’t see nothing. And when I go outside with the sun, I can’t see nothing with this eye.”
Despite the debilitating nature of his injury, slightly more than a year after the loss to Murphy, Edson Barboza returned to the Octagon at UFC 319 in August 2025, again suffering a decision loss to Drakkar Klose. After this, he fought two more times; both saw him getting knocked out, with the latest one coming against Esteban Ribovics at UFC 330. With his latest loss, the veteran finally felt that it was time to hang up the gloves.
Edson Barboza is financially set but still has doubts over retirement status
After 16 years on the UFC roster, Edson Barboza claims he has financially prepared for life after fighting. The Brazilian thanked his wife for helping him in making sound financial decisions, and he stated that he is now able to look forward to the future without having to fight.
“I did the right choices in this part of my life about investments,” Barboza said in a recent interview with MMA Junkie. “But I’m still 40. I’m still young and very excited about the future.
“I have a lot of things to do in the future. Thank God I did the right choices on the financial side.”
But Edson Barboza admits that walking away from competition remains difficult for someone who has spent nearly his entire life fighting, something we recently saw happen with Dustin Poirier as well, as he turned to alcohol after calling it quits on his MMA career.
However, ‘Junior’ is aware that continuing to take part in a striking sport would pose a significant risk given his current condition.
“If you say right now, I say no, I don’t want to fight anymore because, you know, I have a whole camp behind me,” he added. “But I don’t know in a couple of weeks, you know.
“To be honest, I don’t want to go back to fighting. Maybe just do some jiujitsu, man. It’s going to be fun because I really love jiujitsu.”
And well, even his fans and fellow fighters wouldn’t want him to risk it all out again inside the Octagon. Even Khabib Nurmagomedov, who famously defeated ‘Junior’ at UFC 219, was glad to see the Brazilian finally walk away.
“A long time ago, the sport left him,” Nurmagomedov said while watching Barboza’s retirement. “But today, he leaves the sport too. This has happened. When you’re 40 years old, you have to think of your family.
“It’s better. Family is better than to be beat up like this. This is my opinion. But he’s a legend of this sport.”
For Edson Barboza, it seems like the retirement may have closed the door on one of the UFC’s most memorable careers, but his next chapter is just beginning.
