Court McGee’s UFC career ended Saturday the way he fought most of it, standing in the pocket. Then the internet found a way to drag Michael Chiesa into it.
Eric Nolan finished McGee with a straight right at 3:26 of Round 3 in a welterweight bout on the UFC 332 prelims at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. McGee confirmed in the cage that he was done. Within hours, fans were holding up his exit as a stick to beat Chiesa with. Diana Belbita pushed back on X, quoting a post from @ChickenKingMMA that read “Court McGee went out swinging like a G” before taking a shot at Chiesa.
“I don’t understand the hate against Chiesa tonight. I keep seeing these comments… What happened?” Belbita wrote.
The post she quoted didn’t explain the grievance. It just declared that Chiesa “could never be a man like Court.” Chiesa is one of the names McGee shared the cage with during his run, which is about as much connective tissue as the sources offer.
The fight
McGee came out hunting in the first and tagged Nolan several times. Nolan, 29, settled in and started winning the exchanges, and he landed the heavier shots through a second round that had both men in spots. McGee got wobbled more than once and kept walking forward in front of a crowd that grew up with him (he’s from Ogden, about 20 miles from the arena). He nearly saw the final horn.
“Twenty years ago, I got sober, and for 16 years, I have been fighting the best guys in the world,” McGee said in his Octagon interview. He also asked for a send-off check: “Dana, throw us some bonus for my retirement and come to my afterparty. I’m having one.”
Nobody should’ve been shocked. McGee told MMA Fighting before the bout that Nolan was the last fight on his contract and he wanted it to be his last in the UFC.
The résumé
McGee won The Ultimate Fighter 11, beating Kris McCray in the 2010 finale after getting past Brad Tavares and James Hammortree on the show. The best win of his career came at UFC Fight Night 27 in 2013 over Robert Whittaker, the man who later became middleweight champion. He also beat Tim Means, Ramiz Brahimaj and Claudio Silva, and shared the cage with Sean Strickland, Carlos Condit, Matt Brown and Chiesa.
The late stretch was rough. McGee dropped five of his last six, and his last win came against Means at UFC 307 in Utah on Oct. 5, 2024. He leaves the UFC at 11-14 and finishes 22-15 as a pro across 37 fights.
Dana White spoke well of him after the card. “He’s one of the guys that came off ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’ He’s had a really good career here. He’s a nice guy. We really like him,” White said, adding that McGee had overcome a lot personally and professionally. Heavy reported McGee appears set to stay in the sport as a coach at his gym in Utah.
He joins a long 2026 retirement line. Edson Barboza walked away at UFC 330 in August, Cub Swanson called it at UFC 327 in Miami, and Stephen Thompson is booked for his farewell against Charles Radtke at UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 14.
My take: Belbita’s right to be confused. Celebrating a sober guy from Ogden who fought killers for 16 years and beat a future champ doesn’t require roasting anybody else, and a two-line tweet with no explanation is a lousy reason to pile on Chiesa. McGee asked for a bonus and an afterparty. Give the man those instead.
