Magnus Cedenblad announces retirement from MMA

With his injury woes refusing to subside, Swedish MMA veteran Magnus Cedenblad has decided to retire.

“Jycken” wrote an Instagram post Thursday explaining his decision to put an end to his 11-year fighting career after being out of action since November 2016:

Cedenblad’s full statement, translated from Swedish, is as follows:

“Yesterday, I wrote the hardest mail of my life. As everyone knows, I’ve been injured for quite a long period of time and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I have to move on with my life and start a completely new chapter instead of holding onto a dream that is becoming more and more pale. As I said, the hardest mail ever — pulling the cord on your best friend who is now dead.

“A tear runs as I am writing this, but I realize this is the right thing to do. Thank you to the UFC. I got to fight in the world’s best organization. And especially, a gigantic thanks to mixed martial arts; you’ve been my best friend and my partner in life for so many years. You’ll always be here, but in a different way.

“And thank you to all of you who have followed my journey. I wish I could have shown more, but that is a part of being a sportsperson. I would have never been pleased, but I am still very proud of myself.

“Thanks for everything and to everybody.”

The 36-year-old middleweight is best known for a six-fight stint with the UFC in which he went 4-2. All of those wins came during a four-fight stretch that saw him finish three of those opponents, Garreth McLellan, Krzysztof Jotko, and Jared Hamman. Overall, Cedenblad was 14-5 as a professional.

Cedenblad was most recently scheduled to fight Brian Camozzi at UFC Stockholm in May of last year, but he withdrew for undisclosed reasons.