Moraes drove for Uber to save money for fight camp

PFL’s Sheymon Moraes shared some insight on his struggles heading into his fight against Marlon Moraes.

UFC veteran and current Professional Fighters League contender Sheymon Moraes could say he had an early Christmas present. After receiving an unexpected phone call to perform at last Friday’s PFL 10, the Brazilian accepted an offer to rematch former World Series of Fighting champ Marlon Moraes and it paid off.

Heading into the last months of 2022, Moraes revealed to Ag Fight how he was struggling to save money to make training camps and support himself and his family properly. For that reason, Sheymon decided to become an Uber driver until the end of the year, and that’s what he was doing up until the PFL offered him to take on Marlon again.

“Taxes were heavy this year. I had to pay some bills, too. So I had to start driving in order to save money for the camp for next year’s tournament. So I decided to start driving during the end of the year so I can have money to pay for my trip back to Brazil, being an Uber driver. A plane ticket to Brazil is two thousand dollars a person and I have a family of three, so that’s six grand. You’d take three months to spend that kind of money here. Don’t even get me started on how long it takes to earn it,”

“So I thought ‘I’m going to Los Angeles and drive there’. I have friends there who told me money was good, what I could make three or four grand a week if I drove for 12 hours a day. That’s what I did. Some days, I slept in the car. I was able to raise some money. When I came back, I was going to spend a week in Arizona, with my family. Then I received the call to fight. It was perfect timing and thank God everything ended up working out.”

The win over Marlon helped Moraes (15-6) recover from a unanimous decision loss to Lance Palmer, back in June of this year. Before that, the 32-year-old was on a three-fight winning streak, with wins over Boston Salmon, Lazar Stojadinovic and Jesse Stirn.