Renato Moicano: three more UFC fights, then done with MMA

Renato Moicano has set his own deadline. The lightweight told Ariel Helwani on Monday that he will retire from MMA once he fights out the three fights remaining on his UFC contract — and that he has no interest in staying, whatever the promotion offers.

"To be completely honest with you, I want to finish my contract, and once I finish my contract, I don't want to fight MMA anymore," Moicano said on The Ariel Helwani Show.

What he wants instead is influencer boxing. "I want to do boxing, like influencer boxing. I want to beat up people that don't know how to fight. Like this Adin Ross show," he said. "If they pay me a fucking half a million dollars, million dollars to box, I would."

The money is the point. "I think after these three I'm done because [the UFC] is not gonna pay me enough," Moicano said. He first put the number of fights left at "maybe 2 or 3" before settling it: "I just don't want to say, but I have 3 more fights."

He is equally clear about what he will not do. Moicano ruled out signing with another MMA promotion after the UFC, saying it would not make sense when he covers the UFC on his YouTube channel and live streams. "The UFC is MMA," he said.

The model for what he wants to avoid is Tony Ferguson. "I don't want to be like Tony Ferguson. Eight fights, trying to be a champion, 40 years old, on a six-fight losing streak. I don't want that," Moicano said. "I'm happy. Sometimes you have to realize when you're done. You have to realize how much gas you have left in the tank, how much love for the sport you have. For me, it's these three more fights."

Ferguson, who left the UFC after eight consecutive losses, has since won all three of his influencer boxing fights and become the Misfits middleweight champion — the path Moicano wants to take on his own terms, and on his own schedule.

The timing is no accident. Moicano (21-8-1) has lost three of his last four, most recently the stoppage loss to Tom Nolan in the main event of UFC Vegas 123 on October 31 at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas — the fight where referee Dan Miragliotta's second-round stand-up of Moicano off Nolan's back became the week's biggest controversy. Moicano has made peace with that outcome. The decision, he says, is about what comes next, not what happened on Saturday.

None of the three remaining fights has been announced, and Moicano has no date for his return to the octagon. He is promoting Money Moicano MMA 2 on December 5 in Sao Paulo in the meantime. When the contract is done, he says, MMA is done too — and the next ring he steps into will have a very different kind of opponent in it.