What’s Next for Marvin Vettori?
Marvin Vettori’s recent unanimous decision loss against Roman Dolidze has left him wondering what is next for him. At one point, Vettori was a perennial contender, winning five fights in a row and earning himself a rematch against Israel Adesanya for the middleweight title in 2021. However, after losing via unanimous decision, Vettori would go on quite the skid from there. Vettori would go 2-2 before having a serious shoulder injury that would force him to be out of the Octagon for 21 months. Last night was his return fight, and it did not go as planned for Vettori. “What the f can I say? I don’t know. That’s it,” he said in his post-fight press conference. Now, Vettori must decide his next move.
Leading up to this fight, Vettori had hinted at the thought of retiring in December of 2024 on an X post he wrote, “So who wants to fight an easy top 10 guy on his way to retirement??” Many fans were caught off guard as to why Vettori hinted at retirement. Some speculated that maybe he’s taken too much damage in his career, while others thought that it was strange that someone who’s only 31 would retire. However, during fight week, Vettori said during media day, “It starts with Saturday… My comeback starts Saturday.” Again, this left many fans confused.
After losing decisively in the rematch to Dolidze, there are not a lot of options left for Vettori. He’s been in the UFC since 2016 and has fought a lot of the top fighters in his division or fighters that are close to him in the rankings. An interesting matchup that I don’t see many people talking about is Vettori vs the winner of Reiner De Ridder vs Bo Nickal. Ridder is ranked 13th right now, while Nickal is unranked. No matter who the winner in this matchup is, it’ll be a new name for Vettori, similar in ranking, with a lot of popularity to their name. Ridder was a two-weight division champion in another mixed martial arts promotion, ONE Championship, and Nickal is one of the biggest young names in the sport due to his amateur wrestling background. Regardless of what’s next for Vettori, his career is far from over. At 31 years old, he still has time to reinvent himself.
