Marlon Moraes is walking back through the MMA door, and this is not some soft little exhibition lap. The former UFC bantamweight title challenger is booked to face Maximiliano Perez in the LMC 2 main event on Aug. 28 at RedeTV! Studios in Sao Paulo, Brazil, ending a cage layoff that has stretched more than three years.
LMC announced the matchup in the post below:
The bout is listed as a 139-pound catchweight, with Moraes carrying a 23-13-1 record into the return and Perez listed at 14-15. That record line is already enough to make longtime fans lean forward, because Moraes has not had his hand raised in MMA since the Jose Aldo split decision at UFC 245 in December 2019.
LMC 2 begins at 6 p.m. local time, with digital coverage on RedeTV!’s YouTube channel and the RedeTV! GO app. The final five bouts, including Moraes vs. Perez, are scheduled for RedeTV!’s free-to-air broadcast from 10 p.m.
Moraes Is Trying To Reverse A Brutal Late-Career Slide
Moraes was a menace before the wheels came off. His World Series of Fighting run was ridiculous, a clean 11-0 stretch with five bantamweight title defenses before he jumped to the UFC in 2017. After losing his Octagon debut to Raphael Assuncao, he fired back with four straight wins and earned a vacant UFC bantamweight title fight against Henry Cejudo in 2019.
That Cejudo fight still lives in the weird part of the MMA brain. Moraes looked nasty early, chewing up the legs and body, then Cejudo adjusted, marched him down, and stopped him in round three. Moraes rebounded with the Aldo win, but that was the last happy scorecard before the sport started handing him receipts.
The skid has been ugly. Cory Sandhagen, Rob Font, Merab Dvalishvili, Song Yadong, Sheymon Moraes, Brendan Loughnane, and Gabriel Braga all stopped him across UFC and PFL runs. That slide appeared to hit its end point when Moraes retired after the Braga loss, a result that looked like the final chapter for a fighter who had already eaten far too many clean shots.
Instead, Moraes is back. The Brazilian had been linked to the Global Fight League comeback wave before that plan fell apart, and now LMC gets the name value of a former title challenger trying to prove there is still something left in the tank. It is a regional main event, sure, but it has the kind of danger that makes people watch through their fingers.
Perez is not arriving with a shiny record, but he is active and he has the exact opponent profile that can turn a comeback into either a confidence rebuild or a disaster. For Moraes, this is not about climbing into a UFC title picture overnight. It is about showing he can survive a real fight again without the same late-career nightmare playing on loop.
The matchup also gives LMC 2 a recognizable headline piece after the promotion’s first event in June featured veterans such as Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, Jesse Taylor, John Lineker, Junior Albini, and Raffael Cerqueira. Moraes brings a bigger story than most regional returns because fans remember both versions of him, the WSOF destroyer and the UFC contender who later got swallowed by the deep end.
If Moraes wins, the conversation shifts quickly to whether this was a one-off itch or the beginning of another run. If he loses, especially by strikes again, it will be hard to avoid the obvious question. Either way, LMC 2 just became more than a local Brazilian card. It is the return of a fighter who once had elite bantamweights terrified, now trying to beat back the sport’s coldest truth after a punishing PFL stretch and a long retirement detour.
And with Merab Dvalishvili still tied to Moraes in fans’ memory because of that wild comeback at UFC 266, this return lands as a reminder of how fast MMA can flip a career from title threat to comeback gamble.
