Niko Price spoke out about his awkward double retirement with Michael Chiesa at UFC Seattle, which resulted in him being taken out of the cage without even speaking a few words into the microphone.
Saturday night was once considered Chiesa’s night. He was scheduled to fight Carlston Harris because he knew it would be the TUF champion’s retirement fight after 18 years of fighting, 14 of which were in the UFC. But Harris withdrew two weeks before the event and was replaced by Nico Price. A few days before the Seattle game, Price also made the decision to retire regardless of winning or losing.
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Chiesa will eventually submit the price within 90 seconds. After the win, Daniel Cormier interviewed Chiesa before the production trucked into “Maverick’s” emotional retirement video package. After the video ends, Price disappears from the cage. He’d never said anything so long on the microphone.
In an interview with Inside Fighting, Price admitted he was disappointed with how things were going.
“I talked to Mike in the back and we were both cool and everything was fine,” Price said. “Even though I had to stand there and watch him the whole time, they were like, ‘Yeah, you’re going to get microphone time.'”
“I thought, ‘Okay, cool.’ And then I was like, ‘Why don’t I have mic time?’ And I was like, ‘Whatever, don’t worry about it. But can I leave? I don’t want to be here anymore. And I told my coaches, because they didn’t send me off at all. They went up to my glove and took a picture of him with my glove. I was like, ‘No, I want to take that picture with my glove on.’ He’s wearing the glove in the picture.”
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Although his retirement was ruined, Price is content with his career.
“I’m a champion for other organizations and I got to experience the best of all the highlights,” he said. “I’m not making millions of dollars, but I’m comfortable, I have to support my family, and I have enough money to jump into new avenues after this, which is cool. And I can still talk, I can still think. I have a good thought process. I’m not durrrr, and I’m happy with that.”
“When I was three years old, I got kicked in the head by a horse,” he added. “So I shouldn’t have done anything with head trauma. I played football from 9 to 18, rugby to rugby, then rugby to combat. I’m lucky enough to be able to speak loudly and coherently about the fact that I fight and play combat sports, and I can still speak directly. I remember what I did this morning.”
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Nico Price leaves with a 16-11 record and an 8-11 record in the UFC. While there were plenty of defeats on his record during the second half of his career, his record didn’t reflect how much entertainment his fights provided. Hopefully he can enjoy a long post-war career without suffering any more head trauma.
