Cody “The Renegade” Gibson is an American bantamweight fighter who lives in Visalia, CA. He is a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under Cleber Luciano/Tom Knox as well as a former college wrestler. He trains at Trifecta MMA with Marian Reneau (UFC female bantamweight fighter). He holds a Bachelors degree in History and is a Masters degree in Education. He has previously fought for the LFA, Tachi Palace Fights, the UFC, and Titan Fighting Championship.
Cody was born in Blackwell, Oklahoma on September 11th, 1987. At the age of two, he was adopted and moved to Visalia, CA. He was a two time junior college All-American wrestler for Bakersfield College and went on to wrestle for Menlo College in the bay area for three seasons. While still in college, he began to take fights whenever he would go home even though he had no striking or jiu jitsu training.
Gibson made his official professional debut in 2008 with a first round TKO. Over the first three years of his career, he would compile a 5-1 record including second round knockout of future UFC fighter, Walel Watson, at Tachi Palace Fights 9. This would earn his a shot at the TPF vacant bantamweight title. He would take on another future UFC fighter, Ulysses Gomez, at TPF 11, but he would be submitted in the second round. He took on Casey Olson at TPF 12, but he would lose a unanimous decision marking the first time he had lost back to back fights. Over the next twenty months, Cody would fight in various regional promotions and was able to go on a six fight winning streak that included a submission win over Chad George.
In early 2014, Cody was picked up by the UFC to fill an open spot on the UFC 170 card. He took on undefeated fellow debutant, Aljamain Sterling. Although he had moments of brilliance, he would umtimately come up on the short end of the decision in an exciting, back and forth fight.
On 28 June, 2014 at UFC Fight Night 44, Gibson replaced an injured Rani Yahya a month away from the bout with Johnny Bedford. This clearly did not effect Gibson as he made short work of Bedford, winning the fight via TKO just 38 seconds in the fight. Though the stoppage was controversial, Gibson nonetheless earned his first win in the UFC.
On 27 September, 2014, at
UFC 178, Gibson faced
Manvel Gamburyan. Gibson appeared to be well on his way to victory dominating Gamburyan throughout the first nine minutes. Gamburyan was able to latch on to a guillotine choke a get the win with 4 seconds left in the 2nd round to claim the dramatic comeback victory.
In his next bout, at
UFC Fight Night 61: Bigfoot vs. Mir, Gibson dropped to 1-3 in his UFC career, when he lost via Unanimous Decision, to hometown fighter
Douglas Andrade. He was cut from the promotion later that year.
Since then, he has compiled a 4-1 record (4-0 at bantamweight). He won the Tachi Palace Fights bantamweight championship in 2016 and went on to challenge up a weight for the featherweight championship. In his most recent outing, he beat brazilian prospect Gustavo Erak in the main event of LFA 51.
