​Although he played coy leading up to UFC 330, Edson Barboza knew this past Saturday’s fight against Esteban Ribovics would be his final time stepping into the octagon.Barboza (24-15 MMA, 18-15 UFC), a longtime lightweight and featherweight contender who made his promotional debut in November 2010, saw his storied career come to an end after a second-round TKO loss to Esteban Ribovics in Philadelphia. It was an emotional scene for the Brazilian, who shed tears on his way to the octagon then laid his gloves down inside the cage to a standing ovation.”I knew (it was my final fight),” Barboza told MMA Junkie on Wednesday. “I was talking to my wife, and especially my wife and my kids, the only person I talked about with, ‘I think it’s over.’ It’s my wife and my kid. I tried to say, ‘No, it’s not the end’ to keep my focus. But I know. Inside, I know it’s going to be the end. It didn’t matter the result. If I won, I was gong to retire. If I lost, I’m going to retire because I feel I am not the same guy anymore physically.”Barboza, 40, said the idea of retirement started to crystallize in his May 2024 main event defeat to Lerone Murphy. He sustained an eye injury in the fight that has compromised his vision ever since. There was debate that he would hang up the gloves then, but he fought on for more than two years and three fights, all of which he lost while competing with a disadvantage. “I realized in my fight against Lerone Murphy, in the main event, I had a really bad injury in my eye,” Barboza said. “I almost lost my vision in my right eye. Most people have no idea about that. I can’t see out of this side. That’s the first time I really started thinking, ‘Oh my God, this sport is hard and dangerous.’ I started thinking about, ‘OK, maybe it’s time to stop.’ Imagine if I lost my vision? I started to think about it and talk to my wife and she said, ‘Stop right now. I don’t care.’ I said, ‘No, let me try a couple more fights and see how I feel.’ “That’s the beginning of when I started thinking about my retirement is my fight against Murphy, which was a main event. It was crazy because I came from a couple main events to thinking about stopping. I don’t see nothing that comes from this side. I really don’t see. Then my body, I feel like I’m not the same. My last three fights were perfect for me. I saw the fights and was like, ‘This is a perfect fight.’ Then I feel my mind is there. I know everything I have to do, but my body doesn’t follow. I said, ‘Man, I think this is the end.'”Credit to Herb DeanBarboza said he relished every moment of UFC 330, from the fight week interviews to the weight cut to trading punches one last time inside the cage. He didn’t have many moments of success against Ribovics, and Barboza said he was grateful to referee Herb Dean for waving off the fight before he took a blow that knocked him out cold, because he was then allowed to take joy in his retirement moment alongside his family and team.”One hundred percent (Dean did a gr