Athletes
Michael Chiesa | The Last Ride
Retiring Welterweight Speaks About Significance Of Close Things Out In Seattle
If you were to pitch the story of Michael Chiesa’s journey to the UFC as a Hollywood movie script, you would likely be turned down in the room because the beats of the narrative feel too impossible to have actually been true.
A shaggy hopeful from Spokane, Washington, “Maverick” shared the dream of winning The Ultimate Fighter and earning his place on the UFC roster with his father, Mark, but when Chiesa got the call to take part in the show, he didn’t want to go. His father was losing his long battle with leukemia, and the dutiful son wanted to be there for his dad’s last days, but he’d made a promise, so he went to Las Vegas and joined the cast of the one and only live season of the long-running reality TV competition series.
Shortly after he won his elimination round match against Johnavan Visante, Mark Chiesa passed away at age 52. After briefly returning home to be with his family, his son returned to Las Vegas with an even greater focus. When he learned the date of the finale, his resolve increased even more.
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“You find out that the finale is on your mom’s birthday and I’m going through this tournament, every single fight, I’m thinking, ‘Dude, you have to win,’” said Chiesa from his hotel room Seattle, where this weekend, he’ll make the final walk to the Octagon of his career in a main card clash with Niko Price on Saturday night at Climate Pledge Arena. “You can’t maintain this kind of pressure over an entire career because it’s not sustainable, it wouldn’t work, but for every one of those fights, it was like, ‘I can’t lose because if I do, I’m gonna give her another reason to cry. She’s crying enough — she’s hurt, she’s broken — and if I lose and she sees this, I’m gonna add to that, and I just can’t do it. I have to win; I don’t have a choice.’”
Jeremy Larsen fell in the preliminary round by a two-round unanimous decision. In the quarters, Justin Lawrence got stopped by strikes in the third. In the semifinals, James Vick was dispatched in the second, putting Chiesa in the finals against fellow Team Faber representative Al Iaquinta.
Just after the midway point of the opening round, Chiesa put Iaquinta to sleep with a rear-naked choke, winning the competition on his mom’s birthday and making good on the promise he’d made his father.
I had never noticed until now that his performance improved with every round after he returned to the show, going from beating Larsen on the scorecards and finishing Lawrence in the third to stopping Vick in the second and choking out Iaquinta in the opening frame. Knowing the mindset he brought with him back from Spokane, it makes sense, as do the myriad reasons Chiesa got choked up as we spoke about all the pieces that contribute to his walking away after this weekend and working to truly cherish these final moments as an active competitor in the UFC.
If he had landed on the Seattle card last year, the 38-year-old would have walked away then.
He was coming off a decision win over fellow veteran Max Griffin at UFC 310 in a fight that took place on the early prelims and didn’t like the idea of finishing his time in the Octagon without fighting on the main card, which he knew would likely be his future. But he’s also been preparing for the transition for years, knowing from the minute he entered the UFC that he wanted his next career to be as a broadcaster and having slowly and steadily gained more experience on the mic.
After calling some regional action and logging countless appearances as an analyst on the UFC pre- and post-fight shows, Chiesa got the chance to call half of the fights on Season 3 of Road to UFC alongside John Gooden and flourished in the role, strengthening his conviction about the next chapter of his professional career.
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He was penciled in for the February 22, 2025 event, but an opponent never materialized, and Chiesa instead went on to beat fellow Ultimate Fighter winner Court McGee in June in Atlanta in another bout that landed on the prelims. The remainder of the year was flush with broadcast opportunities, including a return to Road to UFC and being a part of the team calling the action at UFC BJJ, and when he started to hear whispers about a return to Seattle this year, the veteran knew it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
And because it’s his story, you know there are elements to it that are just too good to be true, even though they are.
“I thought I missed the opportunity and I just knew it,” Chiesa said with a smile. “‘I’m fighting on this card, the path is clear’ — I just knew it, and then when you start diving into this is my 22nd UFC fight — 22 is my number; it’s tattooed on my chest, has significance to my family; it’s my grandpa’s racing number — and you pair the fact that it’s on my parent’s anniversary, March 28th and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, this is it.’”
Yes — his UFC career will have begun in earnest on his mom’s birthday and is now set to wrap on what would have been his parents’ anniversary, and the fact that he gets to do it as close to home as is possible for the Washington state native only made the decision that much more obvious.
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“It just feels like this is the right thing to do, and the other thing is that there are gonna be people sitting in the stands at Climate Pledge that were sitting in the stands at my first fight in 2008,” Chiesa said, a smile expanding across his face. “In this journey I’ve been on, where I’ve been in the Top 10, I’m chasing titles, I’m fighting for myself and my dreams, wanting to fight for approval of the company and all these things, I want this fight to be for them — for the people that love me for who I am, not what I do. They don’t care if I win or I lose; if I’m in the UFC, working at King Beverage slingin’ beer — this fight is for them, for the people who love me. I wanna do it for them and end this on a high note.”
Michael Chiesa Fight Week Interview | UFC Seattle
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Michael Chiesa Fight Week Interview | UFC Seattle
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Another cool wrinkle of competing in Seattle and going out at home is that he gets to share the card with Terrance McKinney, the electric lightweight finisher he coached during his high school wrestling days.
They’d been penciled in to fight on the same event before, but McKinney’s opponent fell through, and he was ultimately removed from the card. While that moment would have been cool, it pales in comparison to what this week and sharing the stage with him on Saturday night clearly means to Chiesa.
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“It’s another one of those things that makes this moment so special,” he said with a laugh when asked about McKinney, who has shared pictures of the two of them from his high school days at different points throughout his career and multiple times this week. “I remember Terrance in high school, seeing him in his freshman year have maybe a .500 record in wrestling. He wasn’t ‘T. Wrecks’ yet — he was just Terrance McKinney — and getting to be a part of his journey, see the adversities he’s come through, try to mentor him, and try to help him through those tough times is huge.
“We almost got to fight on the same card when I fought Sean Brady, but he lost his opponent, and that didn’t have the significance this has. That didn’t have the significance of being in Seattle, down the street from Tacoma Dome, where he won two state titles, and I got to be there for that journey, coach him through those moments, and now I get to share the card with him.”
Chiesa apologized as his emotions began to wash over him.
Home of the Champs!@MikeMav22 stopped by @Seahawks headquarters ahead of his fight at #UFCSeattle! pic.twitter.com/iH3B97uERs
— UFC (@ufc) March 25, 2026
“I’ve never really cared too much about the money or the notoriety, but to know that I’ve made an impact on somebody that is pursuing the same thing as me is what’s most important,” he said through the tears, wiping his eyes with the inside of his shirt collar. “To hear him say I made a positive impact on his life is what it’s all about.
“I never set out to try to influence people — I just lived by the moral code my parents instilled in me, worked hard, and tried to do the right things, and to know I made a positive impact on somebody like Terrance is big, especially at this late stage of my career when I’m kinda getting older, gaining more perspective. It’s very meaningful.”
Being in Seattle means a lot more than simply the fact that legions of friends and family can make the four-hour drive west from Spokane or knock out a one-hour flight in order to file into the Climate Pledge Arena to cheer on their guy one last time.
When Chiesa’s father was ill, he spent over a hundred days in Seattle going through treatment. As a result, the family doesn’t have a lot of positive memories attached to the city.
“I love Seattle, we love Washington state, this isn’t a shot at the city,” Chiesa made sure to clarify, doing so a day after visiting the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks’ facility and wearing a Seahawks hat. “But there’s not a lot of good memories for (my mom) here, and as we were driving into the city, I just took her hand and told her, ‘We’re gonna make a good memory this weekend; we’re gonna try to put some of this stuff behind us.’
“It makes me go back to that headspace I was in 14 years ago where it’s like Saturday night, I can’t f***in’ lose; I don’t have a choice. I have to try to erase some of the bad memories from this place and replace them with something good.”
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The tears returned.
“I can’t give my mom another reason to cry; I just can’t do it,” he added. “I can come back to that space for this one, and there is no way I can lose on Saturday night; I can’t do that to her.”
For Chiesa, letting those emotions out throughout the week — and he’s been getting choked up and shedding some tears fairly routinely since touching down in “The Emerald City” — is crucial because by the time he’s backstage getting ready to compete on Saturday night, he wants to be able to put them away and be his usual focused, intense self all the way through the end of the fight.
“For me, this week, I haven’t been holding my emotions back; if I’ve had to cry, I’ve cried, and I’ve always prided myself on being open about everything,” he said with a smile, addressing the understandable emotions that have been quicker to arise this week. “But I’m trying to get it all out now because I don’t want to get emotional on the walk, I don’t want to be emotional when Bruce announces me.
“I wanna be f*****’ locked in like I am every fight. I want that intensity to be there; it has to be there.”
Originally scheduled to face Carlston Harris, the veteran from Guyana was forced to withdraw a couple of weeks ago, leaving Chiesa without an opponent for a stretch that gave him the faintest worry that his bad luck when it comes to fighting in Seattle was rearing its head again.
But Niko Price raised his hand, ensuring “The Last Ride” would depart as scheduled, and changing up the way Chiesa is looking at the task at hand this weekend.
“I expect more of a wild fight than I anticipated with Carlston,” he said, beginning his assessment of his opponent and the circumstances he’s walking into. “Niko Price is coming in here with nothing to lose. He doesn’t want to be a part of another person’s swan song like he was for Robbie Lawler, and he’s kinda the short-notice guy. You can’t overlook any part of his career and think ‘I’ve got this one in the bag.’
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“I think there will be some moments that are chaotic, but I thrive in the chaos. He’s gonna have to shut my lights off, and I’m not gonna let that happen. I have to win this fight; there is really no choice.
“Ideally, I go out there, get the finish, and ride off into the sunset,” he added with a giant smile. “Go out there, let it fly, do what I do best, and the chips will fall where they may… but I’m gonna make sure they fall in my favor.”
I asked if he was going to lay his gloves down in the center of the Octagon and what that final walk out of the cage was going to be like for him, and we laughed about how it’s a cool and customary symbolic moment, but that someone will certainly bring the gloves back to him afterward so he can have them as an important keepsake from his final foray into the UFC cage.
“Are you ready for the video package?” I asked him with a smirk, alluding to the great possibility that the UFC will have something cut together to celebrate his career that will play throughout the arena and on the broadcast on Saturday night following his fight.
“If there is some video package, I’m gonna fall apart,” he admitted with a laugh. “I’m not expecting it — fights run long, so you never know.”
I’m pretty sure I know.
Congrats on a terrific career, and thanks for all the conversations, Mike — it’s been a pleasure.
UFC Fight Night: Adesanya vs Pyfer took place live from Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington on March 28, 2026. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!