UFC Middleweight Costas Philippou Retires from MMA

In a somewhat surprising move, UFC middleweight contender Costas Philippou has decided to end his MMA career.

Philippou has not personally commented on his decision. However, Sherdog did confirm the Cyprus-born competitor's retirement with UFC officials on Tuesday.

At 35 years old, Philippou had recently seemed to peak. He lost three of his final four bouts, most recently dropping a decision against Gegard Mousasi. With that said, Philippou was only losing to 185-pound contenders and appeared to have enough left in the tank to keep going a few more years.

There is something to be said for a fighter who is able to go out on his own terms, though. We don't see it happen all that often in MMA.

Interestingly, Philippou finishes his career having only competed in two different promotions, with nine Ring of Combat bouts preceding his UFC career. Of note, he picked up a win over fellow The Ultimate Fighter veteran Uriah Hall during his Ring of Combat days.

Meanwhile, inside the Octagon, Philippou posted a respectable 6-4 record. He stumbled out of the gates with a decision loss to Nick Catone, but Philippou rebounded with five straight wins to ascend into middleweight title contention.

Following his knockout win over Tim Boetsch, though, Philippou left Serra-Longo Fight Team and began training at Bellmore Kickboxing Academy.

That move may unfortunately define his MMA career, as he would only win once more after that before calling it quits.

Presumably, he left Serra-Longo Fight Team because he didn't want to run into a situation where he'd have to compete against teammate Chris Weidman for the middleweight championship. Ultimately, Philippou may have been better off sticking with Serra-Longo, where his ground game could have continued to develop rather than seemingly stagnating at Bellmore Kickboxing Academy.

Still, Philippou had a memorable UFC career with wins over Court McGee, Lorenz Larkin and others in addition to his aforementioned victories over Boetsch and Hall.