Ricardo Lamas

By FCF Staff

After he defeated Bill Ageo last month, Ricardo Lamas said the fight could have been his last, and now the longtime, featherweight contender’s confirmed he’s retiring.

The 38-year-old fighter faced Algeo at the UFC’s August 29th card, and outscored the game fighter for the decision win. Afterward, Lamas said he was thinking about retiring, and in a follow-up interview with MMA Junkie he announced he’s hanging up the gloves.

In the interview, Lamas told a story about how he always carried a rosary in memorial of his brother who passed away in 2009. But, prior to the Algeo fight, Lamas was almost forced to go into the bout without.

“After my last fight, because of my hospitalization, I was in the hospital, putting all my crap away. I misplaced the rosary,” Lamas said. “I didn’t know where it was, and I kind of forgot about it because I pretty much only bring it to fights. And I’m getting ready to leave for Miami, and because I had to go straight to Vegas from Miami, I’m getting everything ready to bring to the fight, like my flag, and I’m looking for the rosary. I’m tearing my house apart and my wife is helping me look, and I couldn’t find it anywhere and I’m like, ‘(Expletive).’

“So I just had to leave without it. And the other crazy thing is that my brother passed away on Aug. 28, 2009. The day of the weigh-ins was Aug. 28, and that night, I had made weight. So I’m on weight, I go to bed, I wake up about 3 a.m. just because I’m so thirsty, and I just start scrolling through Facebook and one of my brothers had posted a comment on my late brother’s memorial page, and I commented on it, and I just started scrolling through pictures of him and kind of talking to him in my head and saying, ‘I know I don’t need a rosary to know that you’re here with me, and please just watch over me just one more time. I just want one more win, and I’ll move on from the sport.’”

“So the next morning, I’m packing up my backpack, the backpack that I use every single day. I’m putting stuff in there, and the main pocket flapped open,” Lamas said. “On the inside of the main pocket is another pocket with a zipper. The zipper was cracked maybe half an inch, an inch, and I’m just sitting on the bed, and I glance over and look at the backpack and through that half-an-inch hole, I see a piece of the rosary in there. And I was like, ‘No (expletive) way.’ So I unzip it, stick my hand in and pull the rosary out and just started bursting out into tears.

“But after that happened, I knew something big was going to happen in this fight. One of my corners was staying with me, and I tried telling him about it and I couldn’t even talk. I kept getting choked up. I was crying, and then he started crying, so I’ve never had anything like that happen to me – if it was a coincidence … the same day that my brother passed away … a few hours before, I’m literally talking to him in my head and mention the rosary … I didn’t have it with me … and I think it was just his way of letting me know he was still there. So he kept his promise to watch over me, so I’ve got to stick by my word, and I’m going to hang up my gloves after that performance.”

Lamas retires having gone 20-8 in a professional career that started in 2008.