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Gilbert Burns is going back to where it started. The recently retired welterweight will face Horlando Monteiro in the co-main event of UFC BJJ 9 on June 4 at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, per MMA Fighting.
For anyone who watched Burns climb the welterweight rankings, this booking carries weight. Before the gloves, before the title fight with Kamaru Usman, there was a black belt under Rafael “Fofitio” Barros and an IBJJF World Championship at lightweight in 2011 — the run that included his famous win over Kron Gracie in the final. That’s the Burns who shows up to the APEX in early June.
Burns announced his MMA retirement on April 18 after a third-round KO loss to Mike Malott at UFC Winnipeg, walking out of the cage with his gloves on the mat and his family in the Octagon. The defeat capped a five-fight losing skid that ran three knockouts (Della Maddalena, Morales, Malott) and two decisions (Muhammad, Brady) against the deepest part of the welterweight division. At 39, he chose to close that chapter rather than chase another booking. Grappling, by his own framing over the years, has always been the home discipline.
Monteiro is a tougher draw than the casual fan might assume. He’s a heavy passer with a base in pressure top game, the kind of stylistic match-up that asks Burns to either play a sharp closed guard or hunt the legs early. Burns historically prefers to fight off his back foot in scrambles, threading underhooks into back takes, and his half-guard sweeps off the lockdown have shown up in highlight reels for over a decade.
The ruleset matters here. UFC BJJ runs sub-only with a points fallback, and the format has rewarded athletes willing to engage rather than stall. Burns has never been a stalling grappler. His IBJJF run at brown and black belt featured a heavy diet of berimbolos and leg drags from De La Riva, though his game has modernised considerably in the no-gi era through his MMA training out of Kill Cliff FC and his own academy in Boca Raton.
The rest of the card has its own pull. Mason Fowler defends the light heavyweight strap against 2021 IBJJF no-gi world champion Devhonte Johnson, a match that pairs Fowler’s wrestling-heavy top control against Johnson’s guard retention and back attacks. Nicky Rodriguez and Ffion Davies also compete, as does Bella Mir, daughter of former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir.
UFC BJJ 9 marks the ninth installment of the promotion’s grappling series, designed to build a competitive home for sub-only and points-based jiu-jitsu under the same production umbrella as the MMA product. The series has steadily added recognisable names from both the grappling and MMA worlds, and Burns slotting in as co-main is the most prominent crossover booking the format has landed to date.
As someone who’s spent enough mat time to recognise the difference between a fighter who knows jiu-jitsu and a jiu-jitsu player who learned to fight, the distinction matters with Burns. His top-side passing in MMA, the knee-cut entries setting up arm triangles, traces back to the same mechanics he drilled in the gi as a teenager in Niterói, where his early development ran through Ramon Lemos and the Atos team with Nova União lineage influences.
Burns hasn’t competed in a dedicated grappling match since dropping a sub-only superfight to Lucas Barbosa at BJJ Stars 7 in November 2021. The opponent is live. The format suits him.
