Former UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks today announced his retirement from MMA.
Hendricks (18-8 MMA, 13-8 UFC) made the announcement on today’s edition of MMAjunkie Radio and will hang up his gloves after more than 10 years of MMA competition.
“I’m done. I’m retiring. I’m getting out of the MMA world,” Hendricks told MMAjunkie Radio. “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.”
Hendricks said being away from training for a fight the past seven months helped lead to his decision.
“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,” Hendricks said. “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 kinds 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.”
And the 34-year-old said his retirement won’t be one like others in the MMA world that have seen fighters quit, only to come back soon afterward. Instead, he plans to put his efforts into coaching wrestling – and only the most lucrative dream return would lure him back.
“Even if you threw Georges St-Pierre at me, the world knows (I beat him),” Hendricks said. “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.”
Hendricks’ shining moment in the UFC came at UFC 171 in March 2014, when he won the vacant welterweight title against Robbie Lawler. That fight came four months after Hendricks lost a split decision against Georges St-Pierre in a title fight that many, including UFC President Dana White, believed he did enough in to win.
Hendricks’ title fight with St-Pierre came on the heels of a six-fight winning streak that included four post-fight bonuses, including three “Knockout of the Night” awards and a “Fight of the Night” decision win over Carlos Condit in a title eliminator. His KOs in that stretch were all in the first round, including a 12-second KO of Jon Fitch and a 46-second KO of Martin Kampmann.
But after he won the title against Lawler in a close “Fight of the Night” battle, he lost it his next time out at UFC 181 in a rematch. He rebounded against Matt Brown at UFC 185, but then went into a rough stretch more than two years ago that has seen him drop five of his final six fights.
During that run, he was knocked out by Stephen Thompson, Tim Boetsch and, most recently, Paulo Costa at UFC 217 this past November, and dropped decisions to Kelvin Gastelum and Neil Magny.
His lone win in that stretch was a decision over Hector Lombard at in February 2017 in a middleweight bout, the division he turned to for the final three fights of his career. Hendricks missed the welterweight limit on the scale for his losses to Gastelum and Magny, and had struggled with making that weight limit as far back as his first fight with Lawler.
But the down-to-earth personality, as well as a hard-hitting style that could turn into a slugfest at any moment, always seemed to endear him to MMA fans. The Oklahoman won two NCAA Division-I wrestling titles at 165 pounds at Oklahoma State in 2005 and 2006 and was a four-time All-American wrestler there. He was a four-time state champion in wrestling in high school.
“Bigg Rigg” started his pro MMA career in 2007 with a trio of stoppages on the regional scene. Then he caught on with the WEC and won a pair fo fights before his UFC debut at UFC 101 in August 2009.
“I’ve been blessed with people around me to help me get there,” Hendricks said. “What have I done with my life to be satisfied with where I’m at right now? As soon as I started doing that, I knew it was time for me to start doing something else. I’ve been very blessed to accomplish everything I’ve wanted to. Anything I’ve put my mind to, I’ve done it.
“I remember getting on (MMAjunkie Radio) nine years ago saying, ‘I’m going to be the champ.’ Everybody was probably like, ‘Who’s this joker saying he’s going to do this?’ And right now, I know what I have to do to get back to where I want to be. I got the taste of the family life, I got the taste of the normal life, and right now … I’m completely satisfied with everything that’s going on. That’s why I wanted to give it to you first, the MMAjunkie world – is because you guys have been there from the very beginning.”