Edson Barboza’s retirement lasted about three months. The 40-year-old Brazilian is booked to face fellow UFC veteran Rashid Magomedov in a “battle match” at ACBJJ 23 on Nov. 13 in Rio de Janeiro, MMA Fighting reported.
This is a grappling promotion, but the rulebook reads like a dare. According to the ACBJJ battle match rules cited by MMA Fighting, strikes with the hands, legs, elbows, knees and head are all allowed both standing and on the ground, stomping kicks included, and every submission and choke is legal without restriction. The one carve-out is anything landing above the collarbone. So Barboza, a guy who spent 33 fights in the UFC as a striker, gets to throw everything he owns as long as he aims at the chest and below.
He has already dipped into grappling earlier this year, so ACBJJ isn’t brand-new territory for him. Strikes are the new part.
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The last time Barboza fought with strikes in play, it went badly. He retired from MMA in August after Esteban Ribovics stopped him by TKO in the second round. That was his fourth straight loss in the UFC, and he walked away right after.
Magomedov is no soft landing. He went 5-1 in the Octagon from 2014 to 2017, then took his career to the PFL and ACA, where he’s gone 6-4-1 with one no-contest.
The rest of the card is a reunion of names you’d recognize from a decade of fight nights. Rousimar Palhares, the former UFC fighter and WSOF champion, meets Andre Galvao in the main event under the same battle rules, a rematch of their wild ADCC 2011 match. Rodolfo Vieira and Kelvin Gastelum, both UFC fighters, square off in a no-gi match in the co-main. Rinat Fakhretdinov takes on Joao Zeferino in a battle match, Phil Rowe meets Gleison Tibau under battle rules, and Antonio Carlos Junior faces Ivan Shtyrkov.
Whoever is booking this thing clearly read the battle rules and then went looking for the most violent pairings available, and I respect it. Barboza could have eased into retired life with a quiet jiu-jitsu match against somebody’s black belt cousin. Instead he signed up for elbows, knees and stomps against a guy who lost once in six UFC fights. No collarbone shots means nobody’s getting head-kicked into next week, but a 40-year-old coming off four losses picked the version of grappling that hurts. That’s a fighter’s decision. Nov. 13, Rio.
