From UFC legends to long-tenured fixtures of the game, these exits deserved more than a footnote as we close out 2025.
At this point it wouldn’t surprise me to find out The Beatles wrote “Hello, Goodbye” about Jon Jones, as we’re never sure whether he’s coming or going. He said goodbye to MMA when the ultimatum was handed down to fight Tom Aspinall, and he said hello again when the White House card became a thing not a fortnight later.
Jones’s farewell was more of a smirk and a wink than it was an official sayonara, but there were some legends who walked away from fighting this year for real. Champions who dominated their weight classes for many years. Dual champions who chased greatness. Highlanders who painted their faces before battle and wore kilts to the ceremonial weigh-ins.
As we continue our end-of-year awards and tributes, we wanted to highlight the most meaningful farewells in MMA, and to salute them the right way for giving us so many memories.
Dustin Poirier
The UFC held a pay-per-view in Poirier’s native Louisiana this summer that doubled as a kind of local hootenanny to one of its most beloved fighters, all of which was a nice touch. He deserved to be celebrated and sent off with a memorable shindig.
But trying to narrow down Poirier’s best fights proved challenging for those of us working the pen, as he was in a great many wars. Not only that, but he was a kid we watched grow up in the Octagon before our eyes. We saw the “Fightville” documentary about him just as he began his voyage in MMA, and we saw him go out on his shield one last time more than a decade later against Max Holloway. We’ve been with him every step of the way, which is rare.
In many ways, Poirier became a symbol of perseverance in the fight game. When he lost to Conor McGregor just as McGregor became MMA’s great cause célèbre, "The Diamond” became a footnote to history. He was just another name on the casualty list not unlike Alfonso Ratliff was for Mike Tyson.
As it turned out, that was still very much part of his first act. He came back, won a bunch of fights, won an interim title against Holloway in 2019, lost a title bid against Khabib Nurmagomedov, and emerged as one of the most popular fighters going. By the time he made his way back to McGregor, it felt as though Poirier had already given the sport as many opuses as one man can, yet he turned into the Count of Monte Cristo out in Abu Dhabi. He finished McGregor in the second round, the redemptive moment when the spotlight was hottest.
That fight became his greatest feat.
Then he won the rubber match against McGregor seven months later when McGregor broke his leg against him. The narrative shifted for good.
Yet the fight I’ll most fondly remember might be the one against Benoit Saint Denis, which was meant to be the final act of relevance. The UFC had him tied to a conveyor belt and it was headed straight for the buzzsaw. Or so we thought. Poirier took his best shot and then, as if summoning strength from the core of his being, bit down on his mouthpiece and returned fire.
Oh, reader, what joyous fire it was. It ended up being his last victory in the Octagon, but it did afford him one last improbable chance at a title. He didn’t get win the title fight, but then again, he didn’t need to.
It had already been an incredible career.
Jose Aldo
Listen, man, was it right for the UFC to send Jose Aldo to Montreal for his swan song fight against Aiemann Zahabi? I mean, the UFC brought Poirier home to New Orleans and shut down Bourbon Street for the occasion, but they dropped the Brazilian king into the wintry north in a thankless fight against a relatively unknown contender.
He wasn’t even the main event.
That last fight was a sad affair, minus any appropriate hoopla, but in the UFC’s defense Aldo didn’t exactly make it known he was hanging up the gloves. He was unclear on whether he’d continue or not, leaving him in the hinterlands between fighting fellow legends and facing relevant fighters within the meritocratic ranks. After a listless decision loss — his second in a row, and the third in his last four fights — Aldo’s career fizzled out more than it flamed out.
Yet when you get to reflecting on Jose Aldo’s career, how things ended doesn’t matter all that much. Those WEC days were the thing of legend. His early run in the UFC? When he was whipping Frankie Edgar and disappearing into the sea of his countrymen after beating Chad Mendes and setting fire to the Korean Zombie and leaving ostrich egg-sized hematomas on Mark Hominick’s head? Holy hell.
It’s all in the B-roll, now. The meanness. The crippling leg kicks. The aura. Dude was a savage.
Maybe the UFC didn’t give him the sendoff he deserved, but we will do so here. Jose Aldo was the original king of the feathers, and he had a damn fine run at 135 pounds against all odds. Just about everything about that man’s career was extraordinary.
Happy trails, Scarface.
Dominick Cruz
It feels like Cruz retired years ago, but he didn’t make it official until early in 2025. He was scheduled to face Rob Font in February but was forced to withdraw with a shoulder injury, an unfortunate yet common theme for Cruz throughout much of his career. Injuries tabled him for long stretches of what was otherwise a brilliant run. There’s a strong urge to wonder “what could’ve been” with Cruz, had he been able to stay healthy.
That’s because nobody confounded fighters like Cruz in his heyday. Nobody bewitched opposition with unorthodox, fast-twitch movement. Nobody turned their chins into mirages, or strafed aggressive fighters with leaning off-balance attacks. He was a joy to watch. The WEC fights against Joseph Benavidez and Scott Jorgensen were top theater. His rivalry with Urijah Faber — and the entire Team Alpha Male conglomerate, for that matter — generated enough heat to melt all the faces in the general vicinity.
Peak Cruz? It might’ve been that the 2011 Demetrious Johnson fight in Washington, D.C. That was just before the ACL and all the other stuff that hijacked his career, and he seemed destined to be on top for a long, long time.
Yet the most inspirational Cruz? His return fight in 2014 when he smoked Takeya Mizugaki in 61 seconds. We'll never forget how good that felt after all he’d been through.
We’ll miss you, Dom!
Henry Cejudo
Love him or hate him, "Triple C" was an apex competitor. He not only singlehandedly took the UFC’s flyweight division off the endangered species list, but he went on to capture the bantamweight title as well. There was a moment — during the cringiest moments of his social media feed — that he was doing highly improbable things in the Octagon.
Of the six wins during his historic run between 2017 and 2020, Cejudo beat Demetrious Johnson (the GOAT of the flyweight class), T.J. Dillashaw (to win the bantamweight crown and Dominick Cruz (see above). We knew about the Olympic pedigree and his wrestling chops, and his longtime affiliation with the “Captain” Eric Albarracin and the videos that made us scrub our eyes, but perhaps what we didn’t fully know was just how bad he wanted it.
I thought his farewell fight against Payton Talbott a few weeks back at UFC 323 told the rest of the story. What a gutsy way to go out. Even when the tide took him completely, and the younger fighter left him bloodied and bruised and obsolete in a sport that had moved on, he shot for one last single leg with a minute to go as if to remember his roots.
So long, Henry. In retrospect, a little cringe on this lunatic fringe was never such a bad thing.
Anthony Smith
My lasting memory of Anthony Smith might not be one he’d pick himself. Glover Teixeira, dropping bombs from a ground-and-pound position in the fourth round of their 2020 fight at the UFC APEX, apologizing to the gentleman Smith for the cruel handling. Through crumbling teeth, Smith — who’d handed one of those teeth to the referee, Jason Herzog, a little earlier — heard Teixeira tell him, “I’m sorry, but it’s part of the job.”
“It is what it is, man,” Smith said.
He said it if the two would soon be off work and laugh about it over a cold one a little later at the bar.
They called him “Lionheart” for a reason. He fought the who’s who over the course of his career. I remember when talking to him before his fight with Jon Jones, Smith looking right at me and saying, “You don’t believe in me either,” as he had been talking about his underdog status. When I told him I thought he presented plenty of challenges for Jones, he intervened again, “No, you don’t believe in me either.”
It wasn’t just that he was a fighter. He was always a down-to-earth, even-keel observer of the moment. It’s served him well in his analyst role, but it was refreshing during the height of his fight career, too. Smith called it a career after losing to Zhang Mingyang in April.
At least we’ll still see him on broadcasts.
Molly McCann
It was magic for a minute there, "Meatball" Molly! Those successive victories over Kim Ji-yeon, Luana Carolina and Hannah Goldy from 2021-22, along with all the performance bonuses, well … it made for a memorable run. Beating Goldy on that special night in London especially. It doesn’t get any better.
Whose idea was it anyway to throw you in against Erin Blanchfield right at the height of Meatball Mania? Right when Barstool was celebrating your every move, and Paddy Pimblett was carrying the megaphone? Was it Sean Shelby? Mick Maynard? Party-poopers, whoever it was.
In any case, McCann retired after losing to last-minute replacement Alexia Thainara when the UFC visited London in March. She figured if she couldn’t take care of a promotional noob, it was time to move on. In July she signed with Matchroom to pursue boxing and ended the year with back-to-back wins in the sweet science. She won’t be taking off her shoes anymore when delivering punches, but rest assured, she’ll still be throwing punches.
Paul Craig
Paul Craig did it right. He donned the kilt, to embrace his Scottish blood. He painted his face before battles, much in the vein of "Braveheart." He went in there with the intention of bringing home to Lanarkshire a grown man’s limb every single time out.
No, he didn’t always win. But Craig won fights he shouldn’t have won. Somehow, after enduring 14 minutes and change of hell against Magomed Ankalaev, Craig landed a Hail Mary triangle choke with a second left on the clock. That was some of the wildest scenes we’ve had in this sport. He tapped out dudes quite a bit, honestly. Kennedy Nzechukwu, Vinicius Moreira, Gadzhimurad Antigulov, all kinds of hard to spell names. He even put away the legend Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in their rematch, and blasted another future UFC champ, Jamahal Hill, in less than two minutes.
Not many saw the latter coming. But that was Craig for you, a live dog if there ever was one.
Down the stretch he didn’t find as much success, but the heart of the so-called “Bearjew” beat strong for 21 UFC fights. We’ll miss the get-ups at the ceremonials.
Pay-per-views
Technically, the pay-per-views aren’t fighters, but they have been associated with the sports champions since the beginning. And they are bidding us adieu. No more pay-per-views on Paramount+ as of January. No more illegal streams. No more debating on whether to just pull the trigger or not. No more hitting the Buffalo Wild Wings to avoid the toll. For those in Missoula, no more mooching off Ben Fowlkes come fight night just because you know he has to orderit.
I’ve written how it’s a bittersweet moment. But it’s a necessary farewell to a dying model. So long, pay-per-view. Here’s hoping you won’t be missed.
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Category: General Sports
