Renato Moicano wants to find out what he’s worth. The Brazilian lightweight told MMA Fighting this week that he has three fights remaining on his UFC contract heading into Saturday’s UFC Vegas 123 main event against Tom Nolan at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, and that his plan is to fight every one of them and then test free agency.
“I want to fight this deal out for sure,” Moicano said. “I want to do the whole thing and then let’s see what happens. I would like to be a free agent, too.”
He was careful to keep the door open. Moicano said he’d judge things fight by fight, looking at how his body feels and what the UFC is paying him. “If the money is good, if it’s worth it, nice, let’s go,” he said. If it isn’t, he has plenty going on outside the cage: a YouTube channel, a gym, another business, a few fighters in Brazil he’s started managing, and an MMA show of his own scheduled for Dec. 5. He also floated boxing and influencing as possibilities, pointing to how much his profile has grown at home. “In Brazil, I’m getting big, like getting popular,” he said.
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The 37-year-old arrives at this headliner on the back of a win he badly needed. After a stoppage loss to Islam Makhachev in a title fight at UFC 311 in January 2025, and a decision loss to Beneil Dariush at UFC 317 five months later, Moicano snapped the skid by submitting Chris Duncan in the second round of the UFC Vegas 115 main event in April.
The road to Nolan was messier than it should have been. Moicano was booked twice this year for a rematch with Brian Ortega, first at UFC 326 in March and then at UFC 331 in September, and Ortega withdrew both times. Moicano said the UFC came back with a third offer, a November date in Qatar, and he turned it down flat. His answer, in his words, was “hell no, I’m not gonna fighting Brian Ortega again, because I just cannot trust that he’s going to show up to the fight.”
So he went to the rankings and picked out Nolan, who has won five straight. “Tom Nolan is a very good fighter, very dangerous, but I need to fight,” Moicano said. The timing is personal. His wife is expecting twins in December, the couple already has two kids, and he said he expects to be out for a long stretch once the babies arrive.
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My take: Moicano is one of the few fighters on the roster who can say “I’m not too worried” about leaving and mean it, because he built an audience in Brazil that doesn’t depend on a UFC poster. Still, three fights is a long runway at 37, and leverage in a free agency conversation gets written in the cage, not on YouTube. Taking a dangerous opponent riding a five-fight streak, on short notice by choice, with twins due in December, is the kind of gamble a man makes when he trusts his own value. If he beats Nolan on Saturday, the people negotiating with him in two fights will remember that he went looking for this one.
