Stefan Struve has announced his retirement from MMA for good.
Struve, who retired after he defeated Marcos Rogerio de Lima in 2019, returned and suffered a TKO loss to Ben Rothwell. After the soon-to-be 33-year-old was KO’d by Tai Tuivasa at UFC 254 many wondered what his fighting future would be.
On Monday morning, Struve took to social media to announce his retirement from MMA. He also revealed he was contacted by the UFC last week for a fight but decided it was time to retire.
“I’ve had an inner ear issue I’ve been battling since May last year,” part of Struve’s lengthy statement said. “I caught a viral infection that has damaged my vestibular system and the hearing nerve in my right ear. After new tests done recently we learned that the vestibular system is not working properly, the first conclusion in May was that it was most likely BPPV (Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo).
“Because of this I have also been dealing with vertigo issues, and also loss of hearing and tinnitus, a ringing noise in my ear. After I caught it in May things got a lot better, after a couple rough weeks at first,” Struve continued. “I was doing good although still experiencing some vertigo and other minor issues but my idea was, especially with the doctors telling me the issues would go away after a while, to just keep going and ignore it until it really was gone completely. Unfortunately during [my most recent] fight some of the issues came back after getting hit flush on the right ear, it was a punch that should not be an issue normally.”
Stefan Struve says due to the extreme training camps it has only made the issue worse. So, for the Dutchman the best thing for him was to hang up the gloves and focus on his health and the next stage of his life.
Struve ends his MMA career with a record of 29-13 and went 13-11. In his career, he fought the who’s who of the division like Stipe Miocic, Junior dos Santos, Alistair Overeem, Andrei Arlovski, Alexander Volkov, and Mark Hunt among others. He also holds notable wins over Miocic, Bigfoot Silva, and Pat Barry among others.
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