TKO loss to Uriah Hall<\/a>. He did make a comeback in bare-knuckle boxing, going 3-1, but he announced his retirement after a KO win over Quentin Henry in 2021.<\/p>\nSince he retired, Leben has become an MMA judge and a referee, but he\u2019s now set to return to fighting. Leben is set to rematch legendary Japanese MMA fighter Yoshihiro Akiyama at Black Combat 17: Vantablack in South Korea on Nov. 21.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt caught me by surprise; it was not in my plans to fight again whatsoever,\u201d Leben said exclusively to RG.org. \u201cHappily retired, I have an exciting career as a referee and a judge, working hard in that career, excelling, and focusing on building my gym. I\u2019ve had people hit me up about fighting, and I\u2019ve always told them the same thing: happily retired. This one was a little different: they hit me up, I gave them the standard line, they came back, said it again, and they came back again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a fight I was interested in. Then the money was right. When those two things kind of came together, I had to see if the commission would let me take time off for the fight, because that is my plan for the next 20 years. Everybody was very supportive. I\u2019m 46; he\u2019s 51. He\u2019s in great shape; I don\u2019t think I\u2019m in terrible shape; I\u2019m in the gym. I think it\u2019s a good fight, and I think it\u2019s a fight that makes a lot of sense. It\u2019s his last fight, and the original fight is probably the most exciting fight of either of our careers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo by Jon Kopaloff\/Getty Images) Chris Leben didn\u2019t think he\u2019d fight again until he got an offer he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-941796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"UFC](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793038212_692_image.jpeg\"\/)
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