At UFC Fight Night 137 in Sao Paulo Brazil, Thales Leites will be making his final walk to the Octagon when he takes on Hector Lombard. And for the 36-year-old Leites, his mind is made up:
“It’s not an idea,” Leites said in an interview with MMAjunkie. “It’s been decided, I will do my last fight, and I will stop.”
Leites has lost three of his last four contests and two straight, to Brad Tavares and Jack Hermansson.
But his recent struggles is not the cause for his decision, Leites simply believes that the time is right at this stage of his life to walk away:
“I’m going to be 37, I already have a pretty big number of fights,” Leites said. “I don’t want to stay at 37, 38, 39 doing this very intense training that also has a lot of impact to the head – the famous concussion. Like it or not, every training session, you’re taking impact to the head.
“Not to mention the abrupt weight cuts. Doing that two to three times a year, we know it’s not healthy. It’s needed in the sport, and it’s common – of course, we do it with medical guidance, and we’re used to it. But how is the future of the athletes who started doing these weight cuts, their old age?
“I’ve had many fights, so I don’t have the same drive, that same hunger to keep training and competing that I did before “I think my time has come. Now, there are new generations coming in. I’m happy for everything I did, everything I went through. I really enjoyed the journey and I’ll keep enjoying it, in a different way.”
Thales Leites already has post-retirement plans in place, and for someone who has been around MMA as long as he has, his life will still be consumed with the sport:
“I have my gym, so I’m going to give it more attention,” Leites said. “I’m going to focus mostly on jiu-jitsu at first, but then I intend to start helping out at Nova Uniao. Then I can have more advanced students that start migrating to MMA. This is something that I think of right now. Things change – not when it comes to my wanting to fight again, but in terms of the field I’m going to act on. I have many things, many life projects, many opportunities.”
To say goodbye to MMA competition in his home country is an appropriate send-off, but there is something that would make it even sweeter:
“The only way it could be better is with a win,” Leites said.
As for how Leites would like to be remembered, the Brazilian spoke at length about what legacy he would like to leave behind in the sport that has given him so much:
“The biggest wins, the biggest achievements, for me, is to always reinvent yourself – to fall and continue to get back up, “Leites said. “Because the win is simple. The taste of victory is great for everyone, when it’s all working out. But when you have an injury and you overcome that? When you have surgery and you get over it and win again? Those are the big wins we have in life. What happens in the fight is cool. It’s great, you leave a legacy. But what you also leave to people is how they’re going to look up to you.
“The thing I find most important, and you can’t measure that because it’s more personal, is for people to see that Thales was a regular guy, like everyone else,“ Leites said. “Who has his daily chores, his daily struggles, and who’s up there living a dream. Thank God, I was able to live my dream, to spend part of my life doing what I love to do. And the biggest legacy is for people to see that I was an honest fighter. A simple guy. Someone who fought with heart. That people who have met me know that I’m a cool, simple, humble guy. A guy who’ll talk to anyone, regardless of who they are. That, to me, is the biggest legacy.
“’I knocked 50 people out, I took teeth out of five, all of them combined didn’t last five minutes.’ That doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me are the good things you left people. As a fighter? You have two arms, two legs, you’re fighting there, one can win, the other can lose, that’s it. That’s competition. The thing is how you deal with losing, how you deal with winning, the respect you give your opponent. How you face life. That’s what matters, to me.”
How will you remember Thales Leites?
