{"id":686243,"date":"2026-05-22T11:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/686243\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T11:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:32:12","slug":"themba-gorimbo-announces-retirement-from-mma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/686243\/","title":{"rendered":"Themba Gorimbo Announces Retirement From MMA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"font-serif text-gray-900 text-sm md:text-base pb-4\">Themba Gorimbo (14-7) has officially retired from mixed martial arts. The Zimbabwean Welterweight announced his decision in an Instagram post, citing his failure to reach his dream of becoming a UFC Champion as the reason for walking away from the sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-sans text-gray-900 text-sm md:text-base pb-4\">Gorimbo&#8217;s retirement comes on the back of a third consecutive loss, dropping a split decision to Jonathan Micallef at UFC Perth on May 2. The defeat left him with a 4-4 UFC record and no quick path toward title contention. In his Instagram statement, Gorimbo was candid about where things stood.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My dream is to be a UFC champion and if I cannot be that I am going to walk away from the sport.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8211;  Themba Gorimbo<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-sans text-gray-900 text-sm md:text-base pb-4\">Alongside his four Octagon wins, Gorimbo will be remembered for his viral moment when Dwayne &#8220;The Rock&#8221; Johnson gifted him a home in Miami after winning his first fight in the UFC after hearing his story. He will also be etched in history as the first Zimbabwean to win in the UFC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-sans text-gray-900 text-sm md:text-base pb-4\">Gorimbo left the door open for a future in coaching or management, and as anyone who follows MMA knows, retirements in this sport are never truly final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Themba Gorimbo (14-7) has officially retired from mixed martial arts. The Zimbabwean Welterweight announced his decision in an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-686243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686243","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=686243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}