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It’s over for UFC featherweight veteran Ricardo Lamas, according to a recent interview. He’s got a lot to be proud of.
And now, his watch has ended. That’s the official word from Ricardo Lamas, former UFC title contender and longtime top-flight featherweight. Lamas recently bested Bill Algeo on the undercard on his way to a hard fought decision victory. After the fight, he hinted that retirement may be coming. A few days remove from his latest win appear only to have strengthened his resolve.
According to the longtime MMA Masters talent, he’s been flirting with this idea for awhile.
“Since my fight with Jason Knight, which was a few years back, I’ve kind of been contemplating,” Lamas told MMA media members immediately following his win on August 29th (transcript via MMA Fighting). “I remember before that fight I told my wife, I was like, ‘If I have a good performance in this fight, I might just call it a career.’ But the thing with this sport is you have a good performance, and you have a win, and then you want another one. And then it becomes like an addiction and you just keep chasing those victories.”
His fight with Knight came just a year after a his remarkable bout against Max Holloway. One that saw both men square off in the center of the Octagon, trading wild blows and daring either man to take a step backward. Following his TKO victory over Knight, Lamas suffered a brutal knockout loss of his own, at the hands of Josh Emmett. A split decision dropped against Mirsad Bektic just a few months later became the first and only set of back-to-back losses in Lamas’ career. The 38-year-old will walk away from MMA with an overall record of 20-8—having gone 15-8 in his 11 years fighting under Zuffa properties with both the WEC and UFC.
Speaking just after his latest win, Lamas intimated that his thoughts of retirement might fade, and that “I could wake up tomorrow and want to call Sean Shelby on the phone and see what he’s got next for me.” However, that’s looking less and less the case. And in a recent interview with MMA Junkie Lamas detailed how a recent serendipity involving the rosary he carries with him on fight night in memory of his late brother helped push him to make his retirement official.
Lamas described how he lost the keepsake after his bout against Calvin Kattar in 2019. And how, the night before his fight with Algeo, on the anniversary of his brother’s passing, Lamas made a deal.
“…I just started scrolling through pictures of him and kind of talking to him in my head and saying, ‘I know I don’t need a rosary to know that you’re here with me, and please just watch over me just one more time. I just want one more win, and I’ll move on from the sport.’”
On the morning of the fight, however, Lamas noticed a half zipped interior pocket of his backpack, one that he’d seemingly forgotten about. Inside was the rosary. Finding it again, in those circumstances was overwhelming.
“So I unzip it,” Lamas said, describing the moment, “stick my hand in and pull the rosary out and just started bursting out into tears.
“But after that happened, I knew something big was going to happen in this fight. One of my corners was staying with me, and I tried telling him about it and I couldn’t even talk. I kept getting choked up. I was crying, and then he started crying, so I’ve never had anything like that happen to me – if it was a coincidence … the same day that my brother passed away … a few hours before, I’m literally talking to him in my head and mention the rosary … I didn’t have it with me … and I think it was just his way of letting me know he was still there. So he kept his promise to watch over me, so I’ve got to stick by my word, and I’m going to hang up my gloves after that performance.”
Lamas put on a fantastic performance at UFC Fight Night: Smith vs. Rakic, picking up ‘Fight of the Night’ honors in the process. For the majority of his career, he only ever lost to the elite. And given fans some memorable moments along the way. Nobody ever aspires to be the gatekeeper to the crown. But few fighters ever achieve the level of gatekeeper to begin with. Fewer still ever achieve that level of quality.