Former welterweight champion Johny Hendricks explains his decision to retire

J. Hendricks has 24 professional fights, 18 wins and eight losses. Photo: Reproduction/Facebook UFC

Last week, former UFC welterweight champion, John hendricks joined the group of great fighters who recently announced their retirement from MMA. In an interview with the “MMAFighting” website, 'Big Rigg' explained why he decided to put his fights on hold.

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According to the former champion, he will be a wrestling coach at Episcopal School in Fort Worth, Texas. He stated that he simply 'lost the love of fighting'. “Realistically, I’m over it. I'm in sport. I did my part and I can say that I'm out of the MMA world and I don't have to worry about anything else going on,” he explained.

Hendricks questioned whether he should have given MMA another chance, but said he felt relieved when he made the decision to leave. “And with that big question being asked now, I felt a lot of relief and I'm feeling really good about my decision. I can still wake up, I train once a day, I'm still training wrestling, I'm still working with guys. The only difference is that I don't have someone sitting here saying, 'Oh, you're walking around at 208 pounds right now, you're fat, you need to lose weight,'” clarified Johny.

The former champion leaves MMA without disdain or bitterness, but hopes to see changes in the sport when it comes to judging fights. “You’re looking at these judges, what do they want? Why do we have boxing judges doing MMA? They don't understand jiu-jitsu and why are they in the same arena? We have technology nowadays. I would like a better organization of referees.”, he said.

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