Den forne welterviktsmästaren Johny Hendricks har beslutat att lägga handskarna på hyllan.
’Big Rigg’ hade tidigare 6 raka vinster i ryggen, innan han mötte Georges St-Pierre och förlorade via delat domslut under UFC 167 i slutet av 2013. Hendricks segrade sedan mot Robbie Lawler via enhälligt domslut under UFC 171, då han blev den nye mästaren.
Sedan dess har Hendricks endast vunnit 2 av 6 matcher, samt missad vikt vid två tillfällen och andra hälsoproblem inför sina möten.
Det här berättade Hendricks via ’MMAJunkie Radio’:
I’m done. I’m retiring. I’m getting out of the MMA world. I’ve been thinking about this long and hard for a while. I’m going to get back to my roots. I’m going to start coaching at All Saints (Episcopal School in Fort Worth, Texas). I coached a little bit of high school last year, but I’m going to make the move over to All Saints and start doing those things.
One of the things that’s nice is being home the last seven months, spending time with the kids, not worrying about what I needed to do. I looked at my wife and said, ‘Do we really want to do this. I know I’m the one who has to do it, but do we want to do it? Do we want to go through the grind that I used to do, be gone for long periods of time, put my family second, do those kids of things?’ Right now, I can’t really say that.
I made this decision two weeks ago, but I prayed about it and wanted to make sure I was going to be OK with it.
Hendricks planerar nu att bli brottningstränare och berättar med säkerhet att han inte kommer att komma ur pensionen för någon mer match, som andra fighters har gjort.
Even if you threw Georges St-Pierre at me, the world knows (I beat him). Realistically, I’m satisfied unless they say, ‘Johny, here’s a million-dollar payday. Come fight this dude.’ You can’t turn that down. That would be stupid. But everything I set my mind to, I achieved it. That’s the gist of what I’m feeling at this moment and what I’ve been feeling the last month.
… I’ll call the UFC and tell them I’m done. I’ll call USADA and tell them I’m done. It’s never a honeymoon phase with me. My goal is to get (high school) wrestlers into national champions. I want to get wrestlers better than I was, better than I could ever be. … For me to do that, I have to put the past in the past and start moving forward.
Hendricks avslutar sin karriär med ett record på 18 vinster och 8 förluster.
