UFC Fight Night 37: Win, lose, or draw, Cyrille Diabate will retire after fighting Ilir Latifi

Jimi Manuwa is set to take on Alexander Gustafsson in the main event of this weekend's (March 8, 2014) UFC Fight Night 37 card at the O2 Arena in London, England (full event details here.)

Tucked away in the preliminary portion of the card, Cyrille Diabate will fight Ilir Latifi in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) top-heavy light heavyweight division.

A win or loss for either man could go a long way in affecting the title hopes of both, but Diabate (via MMA Junkie) has taken his mixed martial arts (MMA) destiny into his own hands and will retire following the scrap.

"Fighting has been part of my life for the last 22 years, and I’ve loved every bit of it. But after awhile, you’ve got to move on to different things."

A contributing factor in his decision to enter the Octagon one final time came after suffering a calf tear at UFC on FUEL TV 7 against the aforementioned Manuwa.

Diabate credits the desire to not call the one-round technical knockout (retirement) loss his last outing inside the cage as the driving force to fight one final time.

"Pride definitely made me go back to fighting. I thought to myself, ‘I can’t go out like that. This can’t be the end of my career.’ It was definitely motivation to continue and end up with a big performance."

His recovery lasted more than eight months, but "The Snake" bared down and here he is heading into his 30th professional bout. But could the 40-year-old have a change of heart if he earns that "Sledgehammer" send-off he is so badly searching for?

Doesn't sound likely:

"After this fight, I don’t think anything is going to be motivating me enough to make those sacrifices and be in the gym daily."

Just one more storyline driving the Fight Pass card set to emanate from London this weekend. MMAmania.com will have the event covered from top to bottom with weigh-ins, live coverage and all the tidbits from the post-fight press conference.

See you tomorrow.