UFC star decided to retire: It's not who I am anymore



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UFC star decided to retire: It's not who I am anymore

Rory MacDonald decided to retire after losing to Dilano Taylor. He had been thinking about it for a long time. “It’s been on my mind for a while,” MacDonald told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I feel like it’s been quite a few fights, actually, where I’ve questioned it but just wasn’t ready.

I felt like I could still have that resurgence in my career. I had a goal that I was driven toward, and I know in the practice room I could do certain things, but I just wasn’t able to do it in the cage when rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Unfortunately, there’s a difference between what you can do in the practice room and under those lights. I just don’t have that certain thing, that spirit, that heart to go out there and get it done anymore."

Last fight; It’s not who I am anymore

The last fight convinced him that he doesn't have what it takes anymore.

He lost motivation but also faith in himself. “Every fight, for a while now, it’s been diminishing. I’ve seen it more and more. This season was my last hurrah, to basically — I was all-in. I was going to put everything I absolutely could into this, and if I was successful, I would just keep going with it and go toward my goals, but if I fall short, that will be the end.

And this last fight, even if I had put up a better fight and lost, or even if I had won, just the feeling I had in that fight was confirmation to me that this isn’t for me anymore. It’s not who I am anymore. So I’ve got to listen to that.

... What was most important in the decision was that he lost his passion for fighting. He felt that his psyche and body no longer reacted in the same way as before. “Just being under those lights and face-to-face with your opponent and not wanting to be there, not wanting to push through that intensity that you meet when you’re in a fight, when someone’s trying to attack you.

You feel that, that intensity. Usually you have some sort of resistance to that, mentally, and it’s just not there for me anymore. I don’t have that passion to keep doing this with 100 percent of myself anymore, and I think that’s confirmation to me that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore”.