Claudia Gadelha has explained why she announced her retirement from MMA.
Gadelha last fought back in November of 2020 where she suffered a decision loss to Yan Xiaonan. Since then, many wondered when she would return to the Octagon.
Then last week, the Brazilian announced her retirement from MMA. According to Gadelha, she retired due to concussion-like symptoms.
“I don’t want anybody to think that I’m sad because I’m very happy with what’s going on in my life right now,” Gadelha said in an Instagram video (via MMAFighting). “In November of 2020 after a fight I had a really bad concussion and I had a post-concussion syndrome, which is the symptoms of a concussion for a long period of time. So I suffered with the symptoms for a little while.
“It was very frustrating because my headaches were like a knife stabbing the back of my head. I was very nauseous, almost throwing up, feeling very, very bad. I couldn’t even go for a walk, couldn’t train, it was very frustrating,” Gadelha continued.
According to Claudia Gadelha, she realized she was going to retire a couple of months back. Since her last fight, she has had to go to the hospital multiple times due to her concussion-like symptoms.
“I had to rush to the hospital in the beginning of my concussion twice,” Gadelha said. “I ended up in the emergency room twice and I’m here in Las Vegas by myself and my family’s in Brazil, it was during COVID so I couldn’t fly to Brazil to go be with my family because it was like in the beginning of the concussion so I couldn’t fly and my parents couldn’t come here because of COVID. I had to spend a lot of time by myself during the concussion and that was very, very frustrating.
“With that being said I started thinking about not fighting anymore. I had a lot of feelings of, ‘OK, I’m gonna go back, I’m gonna beat this time of my life and I’m gonna go back and fight,’ and then other times I would just feel like I shouldn’t be fighting anymore because I had so many other opportunities in life,” Gadelha continued. “I took a little bit more time and went back to the gym and tried to train and I started getting hit in the head and having anxiety from getting hit in the head and being afraid of going back to work where I was in the beginning of the concussion. I did a lot of brain treatments to get healthier and I was so afraid of going back to what it was and then a lot of other opportunities showed up in my life.”
With Claudia Gadelha now retired, she will now be working with the UFC to help acclimate Brazilian fighters to life in the United States. She is helping both to translate and to educate them on “the business side of fighting” while continuing her own studies regarding health, nutrition, and performance.
Gadelha retires with a professional record of 18-5 and fought for UFC gold once where she challenged former nemesis Joanna Jędrzejczyk in 2016.
What do you make of Claudia Gadelha retiring?
