Stipe Miocic isn’t bolting the door shut. The former two-time UFC heavyweight champion said “never say never” about a return to the octagon, and talkSPORT reports he named one condition that could pull him out of retirement.
What that condition actually is, the talkSPORT headline doesn’t spell out, and I’m not going to fill in the blank for him. Retired fighters have hung their comebacks on everything from title shots to a check with a lot of zeros on it. Guessing which one Miocic means is how you end up running a correction on Monday.
The heavyweight backdrop matters here. Miocic’s last big swing went badly. He challenged Jon Jones at UFC 309, and Jones finished him in Round 3 with ground-and-pound after landing a spinning back kick. Jones then walked away from the sport after turning 38 in July 2025 without ever unifying the belts against Tom Aspinall, who was promoted to undisputed champion. Jones later explored a superfight with Alex Pereira, but the UFC didn’t bring him back for its White House card.
Miocic has hardly gone silent since hanging them up. Athlon ran an exclusive this week, headlined as Miocic weighing in on Aspinall vacating, Pereira’s ceiling and Josh Hokit’s antics. Another headline has him backing Alexander Volkov for the heavyweight title, quoting him as saying “He’ll Get It Done.” That’s a guy who still watches the division closely and has opinions about who belongs on top of it.
He also wouldn’t be the first legend to treat retirement as a suggestion. Georges St-Pierre walked away in 2013 after nine straight welterweight title defenses, then came back at UFC 217 in 2017 and submitted Michael Bisping for the middleweight belt. Amanda Nunes retired as bantamweight champ after beating Irene Aldana at UFC 289 in June 2023, and at 38 she’s set to face Kayla Harrison for the bantamweight title at UFC 334. And Alexander Volkanovski just defended the featherweight title at 38 by stopping the previously unbeaten Movsar Evloev in Round 2 at UFC 333, fighting through the flu to do it.
So the age argument against Miocic is weaker than it used to be. Plenty of fighters are winning big fights deep into their 30s right now.
My take: “never say never” is the most common phrase in retirement, right after some version of telling everyone you’ve made peace with the decision. I love heavyweights, and a heavyweight division with a vacancy story swirling around Aspinall is exactly the kind of mess where a matchmaker might call a former two-time champ. But Miocic attached a condition, which tells me he isn’t itching to fight. He’s waiting for the UFC to make him an offer that fits his terms. Until somebody reports what that condition is, nobody should be booking Miocic for anything.
