Former UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks has retired from Mixed Martial Arts.
The former champion has accepted a job as a high-school wrestling coach, where he plans to live out the remainder of his working life.
Hendricks revealed that retirement has been on his mind for some time, and decided to announce it to the world while on MMAJunkie Radio Wednesday afternoon.
Here’s what he said:
“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.”
“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.”
