Gerald Meerschaert lost his 60th professional fight on Saturday night and retired in the cage a few minutes later.
Julius Walker stopped him with ground strikes in the second round at 3:35 in the light heavyweight prelim headliner at UFC Fight Night 290. Sherdog’s event listing has the finish in the first round, while UFC.com and MMA News both place it in the second, so take the official version.
“Can’t Fight Forever”
That was the line Meerschaert gave Michael Bisping on the broadcast. Three words, no production around it.
He said he had “a hell of a time” performing for fans and that he “can’t think of a better job.” For a 38-year-old walking away after a sixth straight loss, that is a remarkably ungrudging way to leave.
Sixty Fights Is the Number That Matters
Meerschaert retires at 37-23. He went 12-15 in the UFC across a run that spanned the better part of a decade.
A sub-.500 UFC record reads like a journeyman. Sixty professional fights reads like something else. Meerschaert took fights nobody wanted, on short notice, against opponents the matchmakers were building up, and he submitted a lot of them anyway.
In 2021 he strung together three consecutive submission wins over Bartosz Fabinski, Makhmud Muradov and Dustin Stoltzfus. That stretch is the version of him the UFC kept hoping to get back.
The Last Six Were Hard to Watch
Six straight losses is the part of a fight career nobody wants to see and almost everybody goes through. Meerschaert kept getting booked because he kept being willing, and the sport is not kind to fighters whose main asset is willingness.
Walking out on his own terms after 60 fights, with a microphone in his face and something generous to say, is a better ending than most get.
What the Middleweight Division Loses
Meerschaert spent most of his UFC run at 185 pounds as the fighter nobody at the top of the division wanted to draw. He had no path to a title and no interest in a safe decision, which made him a bad matchup for prospects and a useful test for anybody being groomed.
Fighters like that hold a division together. They are the reason a 10-2 prospect finds out whether he can actually handle a veteran before the UFC puts him in a main event. The division gets slightly easier to climb now, and slightly less honest.
Walker Got Paid
The winner earned a $25,000 finishing bonus, one of five handed out on a card that produced nine finishes.
Beating a 60-fight veteran in a prelim headliner is a useful line on a young fighter’s record. Walker will get a step up next.
Meerschaert will not. He said so himself, in the cage, right after the worst moment of his night, and he sounded fine about it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.