While 2011 saw the rise of new champions like Jon Jones and the potential development of new stars at lightweight and welterweight, it also saw the (alleged) retirement of several big names in the sport. Let’s take the time to look back at them (or at least the ones I can remember), their careers, and if it was the right decision.
Randy Couture: The Natural announced his retirement prior to his April 2011 fight against Lyoto Machida, one where he was absolutely pasted with a jumping crane kick to the jaw that popped out a few teeth. For Couture, retirement has always been a matter of when. He’s pushing 50 and has found a lucrative job in movies, plus he has accomplished so much in his legendary career, that there was really nothing left for him to prove. He took on what turned out to be an insurmountable challenge against Machida, but he had always been about risk and testing himself against the best fighters, so he couldn’t go out any other way. Despite the loss, Couture can retire with his head held high and that’s something most people in his line of work don’t do.
Matt Hughes: The former longtime UFC Welterweight Champion hasn’t officially retired, but he effectively closed the door on his career after getting knocked out by Josh Koscheck this past fall. For Hughes, I feel like he stuck around for one or two more fights than he needed to. His desire to fight had seemed to noticeably wane over the past several years, and the strength and wrestling advantage he held over everyone during his heyday no longer existed. He probably should have retired after beating Ricardo Almeida in August 2010 and definitely after BJ Penn levelled him in November 2010, but he seemed to waffle on the idea of it throughout the bulk of 2011. I’ve always been of the opinion that if you are unsure of whether or not you want to continue, you should stop. So much of fighting is mental and if you aren’t 100% committed to the idea of fighting, you shouldn’t be doing it. I would think that losing to Koscheck is enough to put Hughes out to retirement, as he lost to a guy who had just fought for the title in his previous fight. It’s not like he was beaten by Dan Hardy or someone who he would have tooled seven years ago and needs to regain some modicum of self respect.
BJ Penn: While on the topic of guys who aren’t 100% into fighting, let’s get right to BJ Penn. BJ claimed he was retiring after an exciting, but decisive loss to Nick Diaz this past October. Since destroying Diego Sanchez in December 2009, his interest in fighting and intensity level has waned. Frankie Edgar’s a tough guy, but there is no way a fully committed BJ Penn doesn’t beat the tar out of him. At his best, BJ is a fighter who can do it all - wrestle, box, and use top notch jiu jitsu - and do it better than anyone else. His weakness has always been in training. A notoriously lazy trainer, it has become obvious that even though he wants to fight he doesn’t want to put in the work to keep himself in peak condition for fights. Before the Diaz fight, he spoke openly about fighting at welterweight so he wouldn’t have to cut to lightweight (even though he is much better at lightweight and wouldn’t face the massive size disadvantages at welterweight) and generally didn’t seem too thrilled about fighting anymore. I think that if his retirement sticks, it’s a good move. His legacy has taken a huge hit over the past few years due to that lack of desire to work hard and dominate like he did during the early part of his career and his 2007-2009 run as UFC Lightweight Champion. Lately, there have been rumblings that he is interested in fighting again. I hope that he only does this if he truly wants to be the best again. Anything less than that and he goes from being a legend to a “Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda Been” that had a couple of good but unsustainable runs at the top.
Mirko Cro Cop: The Croatian heavyweight finally called it quits after losing to Roy Nelson in October 2011. This was expected, and came three or four years too late. He has openly debated retirement since shortly after his stunning knockout loss to Gabriel Gonzaga in 2007 and has noticeably declined over the years. The combination of several injuries to his knees that ruined his ability to throw his patented head kicks with the devastating fury he had in his PRIDE days and an increasing lack of motivation to fight made his drop off from 2006 Open Weight Grand Prix Champion to cannon fodder for up and comers especially depressing to see. It’s a shame that UFC fans never got to see Cro Cop at his best during his killing machine days in PRIDE, where he laid scores to waste. Instead, they got to hear about a guy who was a lethal striker but really seemed afraid to pull the trigger in most of his fights after the Gonzaga loss. During his last two losses (Schaub and Nelson), he appeared to regain some of that fire and came close to finishing both men before getting knocked out himself. In some ways, this was better than just watching him get pummeled by Junior Dos Santos with no response. It showed that he still had some of the desire he had in his younger day. On the flip side, it was heartbreaking because five or six years ago Schaub and Nelson would have been two more notches on his record. Regardless of the disappointment of his UFC stints, I’ll still remember Cro Cop fondly for his time in Japan and excellent use of Duran Duran as his entrance music.
Brock Lesnar: Following his first round finish at the knees of Alistair Overeem, Brock Lesnar became the latest MMA star to call it quits. I have no doubts about his sincerity in the matter. He has shown a propensity to bail on things when the going gets tough, but in this case I don’t blame him. His bout with diverticulitis really crippled his career as a fighter. It did this in multiple ways. First, it weakened him and when combined with aging, robbed him of his greatest attributes - freak strength and speed. Once he lost those gifts, it exposed the significant holes in his game, namely being that he had poor stand-up, an adversity to getting punched, and a one dimensional gameplan based solely on securing a takedown and going from there. He had shown improvement in his striking and transitions going from Herring to Couture to Mir, but the illness severely limited his ability to grow and learn new skills. If anything, he severely regressed against Carwin, Velasquez, and Overeem. While the first two names on that list have solid wrestling skills to limit Lesnar, Overeem does not and he was able to stop Lesnar’s lone takedown attempt. Once Lesnar lost that option, he became a punching bag (or kicking bag in Reem’s case) to those men. If he was younger or MMA was a viable option when he left college instead of WWE or hadn’t missed nearly two years of training due to illness, who knows what Lesnar would have been able to achieve. While his fight career is not impressive, the amount of new eyes he was able to bring to the sport is and should be considered his greatest achievement. Without Lesnar, there’s no UFC on Fox or a lot of the big pay per view buys Zuffa pulled in during his time.
While I doubt 2012 will have nearly as many notable retirements as 2011, there are quite a few that wouldn’t surprise me: Tito Ortiz, Wanderlei Silva, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira are three that spring to mind.
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