Rashad Evans Announces Retirement From MMA

During Ariel Helwani’s MMA show, which streamed on ESPN’s Twitter account, Rashad Evans announced his official retirement from MMA after losing his last five fights, including a 53-second KO loss to Anthony Smith at UFC 225. Here are highlights via MMA Junkie:

On retiring from the sport: “It’s hard. I don’t want to go out losing, or nothing like that, but at the same time it’s what I need. It’s what I need to do because I feel like I have other things in life that are calling me to go, too. I thought how hard it would be for me to really say these words or really make a statement about it, but I needed to. It’s part of me healing and just accepting the what-is. I can’t fool myself any longer about it.”

On moving on: “I feel a little unsettled about the way my career ended, but I think I had to end this way. I don’t think I would have stopped if it didn’t end this way. Having it end this way, it was hard, but there’s no mistakes in life and it was necessary. I trust the process in life and I trust the universe, and God, and I know it’s going to decide what’s best for me.”

On if he’ll ever fight again: “I can say for certainty that I won’t fight again. I feel like there’s other things in life I want to do. I know there’s other things in life I want to do. … It’s so much that goes into it all. At one point in my life I felt as if fighting was everything – it was everything. But now, I put life second. But now life is taking over and fighting is becoming second. Competing in a sport like MMA where you have a lot of guys who haven’t been to the top of the mountain, who haven’t experienced the things I’ve experienced, they’re hungry for it. For me, I was just lukewarm.”

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— ESPN (@espn) June 25, 2018