After twelve years as a professional mixed martial artists and 37 fights, Matt “The Immortal” Brown may have made his final walk to the cage on Saturday. The 36-year-old stated that his UFC Fight Night 120 co-main event bout against veteran Diego Sanchez would be his final time inside the Octagon but walked those comments back during fight week. After his performance, he may rethink retirement.
If Saturday was Brown’s final fight, he’ll walk away from the fight game on a high note. He weather Sanchez’ aggressive attacks and takedown attempts to score a first-round knockout. It was Brown’s first win since July 2015.
Sanchez rushed across the cage at the sound of the bell and landed right hand before quickly changing levels and looking for a takedown. Brown defended the attempt and the two separated. Sanchez continued to look to get the fight to the ground, but Brown shook off each attempt.
Sanchez briefly hurt Brown with a liver kick, but Brown fired back. Sanchez threw another body kick and Brown caught it and delivered a devastating elbow that left Sanchez face-planted on the canvas. The end came at the 3:44 mark of the opening round.
Following the fight, Brown praised Sanchez calling him “the truest warrior in the sport.”
“I can’t say enough good things about Diego,” he said. “Diego, man, you have to fight him. I wish we could have put on a longer fight for everybody.”
Despite the retirement talk prior to the fight, Brown left the door open to returning to the cage.
“We’ll see what happens. I’ll talk about it with my friends and family over the holidays,” he said. “I had to keep my focus on Diego. If you don’t put 100-percent focus into him, he’s going to whoop your (expletive) and I didn’t want that to happen to me tonight so I gave it all I’ve got.”
