Michael Chiesa can tell you if he knows. It was a little secret that he had not dared to say out loud until now. But after Saturday’s victory over Nico Price, the fighting part of his career is now behind him and he can finally say it.
“That was during the Court McGee fight,” Chiesa told The Uncrowned . “For the first time in my life I restrained myself from pulling the trigger, from using force. It was out of fear. I was afraid of getting hurt and losing. That was the first time I felt that way in combat, and it scared me away from taking the same risks I did when I was younger.”
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This was last summer. Chiesa kept the matter to himself. He didn’t tell his teammates, coaches, or even his wife. He didn’t know what this feeling meant yet, but he knew what it meant.
Later that summer, while working the commentary booth at a UFC event, Dustin Poirier described his thoughts heading into his final fight with Max Holloway. Poirier recalled that when Holloway invited him to fight in the middle of the cage at the end of the final round, something inside him just didn’t agree. For the first time, he found himself thinking about all the terrible what-if scenarios in fighting games.
What if I get hurt? What if this was an exchange of punches that caused horrific lasting damage to me? What if I’m never the same again?
“I was working with Dustin when he said that, and I immediately thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is exactly how I feel,'” Chiesa said. “It felt like, instead of fighting hard and pushing for the finish and trying to make a mark in the fight, I was holding myself back for the first time in my life. It seemed like a sign that, okay, the finish is here.”
Israel Adesanya lost his fourth straight fight on Saturday, prompting the former UFC champion to retire. But for professional boxers, knowing when to say what to say is never easy.
(Matt Hayward via Getty Images)
Ask around and you may find that the signs aren’t always clear. Or maybe they do, and those on the receiving end simply turn a blind eye to them out of character or choice.
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Fans tried their best to help. When they see a boxer that they think should be in the sport, they don’t hesitate to let that person know.
Just look at Israel Adesanya. The former two-time UFC middleweight champion lost his fourth straight fight Saturday night at UFC Seattle. Since then, the future of his career has been discussed publicly every day in the boxing community. Never mind that Adesanya himself doesn’t seem to want to hang up the gloves for good just yet. The internet is flooded with everyone from strangers to friends offering unsolicited advice on his next move.
“I’d love to see him retire,” former UFC flyweight champion Demetrius Johnson said yesterday on “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “He’s got nothing else to do in MMA. I think he’s done it all – you don’t even take into account the kickboxing fights he’s been in. The guy’s been in tears, struggling. I think he should relax, enjoy himself and find other things to do.”
But what if he doesn’t want to? Or what if he doesn’t think it’s needed yet? I remember years ago when fans told Ken Shamrock to give it up and leave his middle-aged ass on the spectator side of the chain-link fence, and he told me how frustrating it was for a boxer to hear that. He points out that to succeed in this brutal sport, you have to be the kind of person who can walk on fire. If a few losses or even some serious bumps and bruises were enough to make you stop, you would have stopped long ago.
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Shamrock noted that fans celebrate this tenacious quality in their favorite fighters. They despise fighters who give up when the going gets tough. So why, he wondered, did they seem so keen to hate him now? reject quit?
Javier Mendez has tried to have this conversation with his fighters before. As the longtime coach at the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif., he’s seen UFC champions like Daniel Cormier, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Cain Velasquez come and go. But every time Mendes tried to tell the boxer that his time was up, the conversation never ended.
“I’ve been trying to talk fighters out of it for years and believe it or not, it’s never worked,” Mendes said. “Not once.”
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Mendez tried a few different tactics, he said. A gentle approach. Tough love. Tell a soldier directly to his face: “Look, you don’t have it anymore.” The result is always the same.
“One time it got so bad, I would tell the guy, ‘Hey, if you don’t retire, I’m not going to be on your side anymore. I don’t want to see that happen to you, so I won’t be there.'” It didn’t matter,” Mendes said. “The guy kept fighting and not doing well. One time he even made me work in his damn corner when I didn’t want to. “
For many fighters, results alone don’t provide a compelling enough reason. Anyone can lose a few battles. We know this. Fighting is a brutal and fickle sport, and there are plenty of ways to slip on a banana peel and end up on the losing end. The judges may screw you up on the scorecards. The referee may stop play prematurely. A boxer may look great in two rounds but get caught with a good punch in the third round. Is he really going to end his entire career over this?
I’ve been trying to talk fighters out of it for years, but believe it or not, it’s never worked. Not once.
Adesanya is a perfect example. His string of losses includes two former champions and a top contender. All of these guys could conceivably beat any other middleweight in the world on any given night. If losing to them means you shouldn’t fight anymore, then the 185-pound rankings will become even thinner.
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For former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans, it wasn’t the outcome of the fight that convinced him to stop. Rather, this is how he felt during the preparation phase. Toward the end of his career, Evans said, training became a chore. It’s never easy, but it’s not all boring drudgery. Passion carries him through those tough days in the gym—until it doesn’t feel that way anymore.
“I prefer being outside the gym than being in the gym,” Evans said. “I lost touch with it. I trained as a means to an end.
“I lost that belief. It’s that belief that carries you through those tough moments in a fight because you know you’ve been in those moments in your career where things could have gone either way, but you overcame it because you had that belief. After you get knocked down or hurt a few times, now every time you take a shot you’re like, ‘Oh shit, is this going to happen again?'”
Rashad Evans went undefeated on his way to winning the UFC title in 2008, defeating the likes of Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin, but fell to 1-5 to end his career.
(Dylan Burr via Getty Images)
Evans points out that it’s even trickier for warriors who have been to the mountaintop once or twice before. A fighter like Adesanya will be judged not only by how he performs in each fight, but also by how he views the peak of his career, when he was a nearly untouchable champion.
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“Izzy had those magical nights,” Evans said. “At that point, you’re not just competing against the person in front of you. You’re competing against who you are on those good nights. Izzy will be judged by who he was when he came out dancing and fell asleep to Robert Whittaker. That’s who he’s up against every time he walks out.”
For some fighters, the decision to retire is based on a cold analytical assessment of the facts. Such was the case for Brian Stann, who hung up the gloves after knocking out Wanderlei Silva in the main event of the 2013 UFC show in Japan.
“For me, it was always a value-based decision,” Stein said. “Are you making enough money to compensate for the additional quality of life loss that you’re probably going to suffer by continuing to do these training camps and fights? Because it’s not just the injuries that you get in the fights, but in the practices. For me, it’s obvious that I’m going to be a lot better outside of the Octagon. Value. There were things I wasn’t willing to compromise on, and that told me, ‘Hey, it’s time. ‘This is not the way I wanted to go out three years earlier than I planned to do, but I knew I had more value doing something else and I had to make this tough decision.”
After retiring, Stann began working as a full-time commentator for the UFC. He later entered the business world, earning an MBA from Northwestern University and then becoming CEO of Hunter Military Communities. But Stann said the transition period as a UFC color commentator helped ease him into post-MMA life, in part because it allowed him to be close enough to the world without having to face the reality of retirement immediately.
Brian Stann ended his career in a memorable brawl with mixed martial arts great Wanderlei Silva at a UFC event in Japan.
(Josh Hedges via Getty Images)
“Every fight I start, [UFC play-by-play commentator] Jon Anik and [UFC matchmaker] Sean Shelby and I planned my comeback,” Stein said. “I mean, we do it every time. It kind of helped me get over this constant thought of, ‘Hey, there’s more inside me. I can still do this.
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“What held me back was, ‘Am I good enough to win a belt, or am I just doing it for the paycheck because I love it?’ Because my body had been put through a lot of wear and tear. I played football for Pop Warner all through college, and then I started a military career and an MMA career. At some point, you do things to yourself that all the money in the world can’t undo.”
Chiesa has also taken on commentary duties with the UFC to help ease his transition. This helps in many ways, he said. This not only gave him a plan for the next phase of his life, allowing him to retire Enter But it also forced him to think about the sport as an analyst, not just a boxer.
“When you step back and look at the sport this way, you start to see things through a different lens,” Chiesa said. “When you first get into this sport, you think, ‘I’m going to keep going until the wheels fall off, until I have nothing left.’ I was the same way when I first started. When you’re young, it seems like you have some grit. Then you see what it actually looks like. We’ve seen some great retirements and we’ve seen some really bad retirements.”
One thing that seems certain is that no amount of external stimulation can convince a boxer that he’s done until he makes up his mind for himself. If he was so easily swayed, he might have been talked out of it long ago. The ability to overcome pain and failure, even a frustrating series of setbacks, is a prerequisite in this world. Beyond a certain point, it’s also a responsibility. It’s just that a lot of the time, warriors don’t see this until they’re past this point.