Henry Cejudo will walk to the cage one final time Saturday as he wraps up a legendary MMA career that saw him win belts in two weight classes.<\/p>\n
Yet the journey he concludes in a bantamweight bout against Payton Talbott on the main card of UFC 323 at T-Mobile Arena won\u2019t be the first sports accomplishment he tells his future grandchildren about.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Olympics is more special,\u201d said Cejudo, a gold medalist in freestyle wrestling at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. \u201cI\u2019m very proud of becoming a two-division champ, but doing something in the sport of wrestling, I prefer being called an Olympic champion to a UFC champion 100 percent. \u2026 It was my dream since I was a little kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cejudo, who is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and likely to go into the UFC\u2019s, believes the UFC belts have been cheapened somewhat by a proliferation of undeserving challengers being granted title shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat stuff doesn\u2019t exist in the Olympics,\u201d he said. \u201cYou are in a 16-man bracket. You don\u2019t know who the hell you\u2019re going to wrestle until the next day. If you\u2019re truly the best, you have to show it. Sometimes that doesn\u2019t feel like the case here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cejudo found a way to conquer both sports in an illustrious career that will end Saturday, win or lose.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a decision he made once before, but he insists it\u2019s real this time at age 38. When Cejudo stepped away from the UFC in 2020, he did so as the reigning champion. He knew he could still compete at the highest level.<\/p>\n
He returned in 2023 to fight for the belt again and lost to Aljamain Sterling. He then dropped a decision to Merab Dvalishvili before a controversial loss after an eye poke to Song Yadong in February.<\/p>\n
Now that he\u2019s a family man with two children and successful ventures outside the cage, Cejudo knows it\u2019s time to retire for good.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t serve two masters,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m in real estate and the content business, and I think I do a pretty good job of that. The \u2018Triple C\u2019 of before was single, young and wild and doing my thing dedicated 100 percent to fighting. But if I can\u2019t be the best in the world, then why do it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Cejudo believes he can move on the same way he moved on from wrestling. He can appreciate what he did without reflecting too much on what he still could have accomplished.<\/p>\n
Cejudo also can rest easy with the feeling he did more for the sport than it did for him. He thinks his ability to create an overconfident \u201cKing of Cringe\u201d character helped generate enough interest in the 125-pound division he once dominated to keep the weight class from being eliminated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho else saved an entire division from extinction,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if it was just that, thanks to the gimmick and the persona, the weight class was able to elevate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The card will be the final pay-per-view of the ESPN era. The main card will begin at 7 p.m., with the preliminary card on ESPN2 at 5 and the early prelims streaming at 3 on ESPN+.<\/p>\n
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com.<\/a> Follow @AdamHillLVRJ<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n UFC 323<\/p>\n \u2014 Main card bouts for Saturday’s 7 p.m. pay-per-view at T-Mobile Arena:<\/p>\n \u2014 Merab Dvalishvili (21-4) vs. Petr Yan (19-5), for Dvalishvili’s bantamweight title<\/p>\n \u2014 Alexandre Pantoja (30-5) vs. Joshua Van (15-2), for Pantoja’s flyweight title<\/p>\n \u2014 Brandon Moreno (23-8-2) vs. Tatsuro Taira (17-1), flyweights<\/p>\n \u2014 Henry Cejudo (16-5), vs. Payton Talbott (10-1), bantamweights<\/p>\n \u2014 Jan Blachowicz (29-11-1) vs. Bogdan Guskov (18-3), light heavyweights<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henry Cejudo will walk to the cage one final time Saturday as he wraps up a legendary MMA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-327952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}