This past Saturday, Alexander Gustafsson became the latest high-profile fighter to call it quits on his career. Or at least, so he said. Gustafsson was submitted by Anthony Smith in the UFC Stockholm main event in front of his home fans, then left his gloves in the cage and said the show was over for him. (Nick Hein retired, too, after the event, in a much more subdued announcement.)
But we’re about to see Urijah Faber return after announcing a retirement, and it seems like pretty much every fighter who calls it a career eventually decides to come back. So should we take these retirement announcements seriously, since most of them don’t seem to stick? MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn, Matt Erickson and Steven Marrocco sound off in this edition of “Triple Take.”
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Mike Bohn: A structureless sport breeds structureless retirements
While I’m inclined to believe Gustafsson’s retirement will be one of the few that sticks, the fact that can’t be said with absolute certainty is a testament to the unpredictable nature of fighter retirements. That will continue to be the reality until an evolution in the sport occurs.
Unlike the NBA, NFL and other major pro sports leagues, MMA has no system to support its retired athletes. There’s no structure. Once a slide happens, promoters and fans will wash their hands of a fighter just as quickly as they embraced them on the way up, and fighters can only count on themselves to make post-fighting life work.
Gustafsson, for example, said he has “a gym and have a couple of other projects going on.” Sounds promising enough, but this is someone who had eight UFC main event fights and three championship opportunities. He’s also been the face of MMA in Sweden for the past decade, which is a torch that very few in the sport get to bare for their country. Gustafsson, for his part, had a career the vast majority could only dream of, and if he played it right he should be coming out in a relatively good spot.
But the uncertainty of that is what leaves the door open for a return. Unless there’s a firm exit plan for when it’s all over – and no association or union currently exists to assist with that – the option of jumping back in for a competitive or financial fix always lingers. Other sports have forums to aid athletes in retirement life, but fighters better hope they’ve got enough savings to carry them through life or until the next plan can be sorted.
Every retirement in MMA is so different that it’s impossible to give a blanket assessment of what they mean. Variables such as level of success, longevity, damage, financial security and more all play a role in how long a fighter competes, and all fighters have their own motivations for stepping in that cage.
All we can hope is that they’ve made the right decisions along the way so that they aren’t fighting for the wrong reasons.
Matt Erickson: Stop fooling yourself that 90 percent of these retirements are real
It takes a lot for me to say Jon Jones was right about something, but when he called bullroar on Alexander Gustafsson’s retirement, he pretty much was spot on. Now that we’ve seen MMA as a sport blossom into a full-grown adult, we’ll see plenty more retirement announcements.
And the fact of the matter is, we probably can feel free to presume nine out of every 10 of them won’t stick. Is Gustafsson going to come back? He says probably not, and time ultimately will tell. But it’s a pretty safe bet that he will. Urijah Faber’s coming back. Tito Ortiz keeps retiring and unretiring. Mirko Cro Cop. Chael Sonnen. Even Conor McGregor said he’s done, and we naturally know that’s not likely to be the case.
This isn’t unique to MMA – but it seems to happen with a much greater frequency. So instead of trying to change it – because it’s not going to change; fighters are going to keep saying they’re done, and when the money starts to run low, they’re going to come back and do a bare knuckle fight or take a one-off in Japan or change promotions and try a revival – it might be best to try to understand why it happens so often in the sport.
I think the same reason fighters tend to unretire is the same reason they’re in the sport to begin with: They’ve got something that’s wired in them differently than other athletes, and certainly different from those of us who just observe from the outside. They’re sick in the head – and not necessarily in a bad way, either. Their competitive circuitry runs at such an advance level compared to the rest of us that when they walk away, it starts to build up and they just can’t take it anymore if they’re not releasing it some other way.
Only a select few can leave the sport and stay gone from actual fighting, and those fighters seem to be the ones who can land lucrative enough gigs – like ESPN broadcast spots – to keep the money flowing and keep them on the inside enough to satiate what got them into it in the first place.
Steven Marrocco: Retiring is mind over matter
MMA is just a brutal business. This we know, of course, though I think most of us who haven’t fought don’t fully appreciate how brutal it is and probably never will, which is why there’s a special bond between those that have – and a skepticism toward the opinions those who haven’t.
So this is an outsider’s perspective, but here’s how I see the fighter’s predicament: You spend most of your waking hours suffering in a variety of ways to become excellent in several different martial arts; then you have to convince people to hire you, and then you have to get people to like you based on many intangibles that are not within your control; then you work for paydays and opportunities which may or may not arrive, to an audience that’s just as likely to mock you as they are to offer praise.
If you make beat the odds, you can make a lot of money and be a star and retire young. If you don’t, you have to figure out how to make the best out of this very bizarre, taxing, and frequently exhilarating job.
As tough as every fighter is, there is a breaking point. For all the ups, there are a lot of downs in a business where your mind and body undergoes so much abuse. Many times, the catalyst is something physical, as in the case of Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal. But for most, it’s of the mind. It’s that realization that passion isn’t there anymore. That no matter how the backdrop changes in how you use your body to make a living, there’s still a soul that has to animate that activity. You’ve got to love the process, perhaps more than any other sport in the world. When you don’t, you’re only delaying the inevitable.
There are many different paths to that exit door. We’ve seen a few fighters go out on top. More often, they hang around for too long. To me, what recent retirements remind us is that for everyone who starts out young and capable and ready to take on the world will eventually find that breaking point. They might not abide it, and the very structure of the industry ensures they can easily overstay their welcome. But it will happen to everyone.
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