Before his third bout with Daniel Cormier in August of 2020, I asked Stipe Miocic what he wanted his legacy to be. The Ohio native was already a two-time UFC heavyweight champion, the owner of the most heavyweight title defenses in the history of the promotion, and the owner of wins over the best big men of his era.
But he wanted simpler accolades for people to talk about a hundred years from now.
“I just want to be remembered as a guy that went out there and fought, didn’t talk s**t and did his job,” Miocic told me.

Last month, the 42-year-old made the walk to the Octagon for the final time to face Jon Jones for the heavyweight title he once wore so proudly. He came up short against Jones, but it almost didn’t matter, because Miocic’s career was never about the numbers, even though those are the first things that most people will talk about when evaluating his 14 years as a professional. It was about a blue-collar guy from Cleveland doing blue-collar work at the highest level of the sport, and yeah, he fought, didn’t talk s**t and did his job.
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So, mission accomplished for Miocic, who retired with a 20-5 (15 KOs) record. It was a career that will land him in the UFC Hall of Fame, and while the full-time firefighter and paramedic embraced his roots as an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things, it’s key to point out that he was an elite athlete along with being someone you could picture having barbecues with if he was your next-door neighbor.
Here's the breakdown:
Earned eight varsity letters in high school (baseball, football, wrestling).
Division I, nationally ranked wrestler for Cleveland State.
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Third baseman for the Cleveland State baseball team.
2009 Cleveland Golden Gloves boxing champion and National quarterfinalist.
Yet when he made his UFC debut in 2011 against Joey Beltran, fight fans didn’t know what to expect from him, despite a 6-0 record with six knockouts.

“I’m a hard-nosed guy, I’m ready to fight, and I’m ready to have some fun and show some fireworks,” he told me before the fight, which he won a unanimous decision.
Miocic won two more UFC bouts before getting stopped by Stefan Struve in the second round of a main event bout in Nottingham, England. It earned Fight of the Night honors, but many wondered if Miocic had what it took to take his career to the next level.
Those doubters reminded Miocic of a wrestling match he had in high school when he was a significant underdog. His mother, Kathy, couldn’t believe such blasphemy.
“They think you’re gonna lose,” she laughed.
“I’ve never seen my mom ever act that way,” said Miocic when recalling the story in 2018. “It wasn’t cocky, but ‘They think you’re gonna lose, how dumb are they?’ And she walked away. And ever since she told me that, I love shutting people up. I’m sick of always being doubted.”

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Miocic carried that chip on his shoulder throughout his career, and it fueled him, even though those doubters fell one by one as he delivered victories over Roy Nelson, Gabriel Gonzaga, Mark Hunt and Andrei Arlovski after the loss to Struve, with the only defeat a Fight of the Night decision to Junior Dos Santos.
In 2016, he won the UFC heavyweight title for the first time by knocking out Fabricio Werdum in Curitiba, Brazil, yet after a pair of successful title defenses against Alistair Overeem and Dos Santos, the skeptics resurfaced when he was slated to face feared knockout artist Francis Ngannou in January of 2018.
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“I wasn’t really getting the respect, but I’m used to it by now,” he said following the bout. “It’s another day in the office.”

It was far from another day in the office. Against the odds, Miocic shut down Ngannou’s offensive attack and shut him out, 50-44 on all cards. Miocic had more spectacular victories, but in my eyes, this was the most impressive. It was a master class.
“They were building him up as the next big thing and I had to put a stop to it,” said Miocic. “He (Ngannou)’s got a great career ahead of him if he puts his mind to it, and he’s gotten better. The more he gets better and the more fights he has, he’s going to be amazing.”

Ngannou would even the score with Miocic, stopping him in the main event of UFC 260 in March of 2021, but as far as the Croatian-American battler’s career was concerned, that loss, which came after a memorable trilogy with Cormier, didn’t affect how fight fans viewed him. He did everything he planned to do when he began his mixed martial arts career and, for a long time, he was the baddest man on the planet.
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But he was never after those accolades. The married father of two just wanted to be Stipe, the guy next door who just happened to be the best heavyweight in UFC history.
Again, mission accomplished.
