Urijah Faber Discusses the Experience of His Final MMA Fight

Former UFC fighter Urijah Faber spoke on the last fight of his MMA career at the post-fight press conference following UFC on FOX 22. For the main card, Faber beat Brad Pickett by unanimous decision for the final fight of his career. During the presser, Faber spoke about what’s next for his life after fighting (via MMAjunkie) Below are some highlights and a video of the press conference.

Faber on the firsts that happened in his career for the fight: “Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to enjoy that either. Because for the first time in my life, after a workout I’ve thrown up. So I threw up like five times, and that was a first. That was also the first time ‘Big’ John McCarthy was a referee for me, and I’ve been a fan of his since high school, which is kind of weird. So, a couple of firsts tonight. First retirement fight, first John McCarthy fight, first throwing up a bunch.”

On how far his career has come: “The coolest thing about this experience is how it started for me. I was fighting in the Indian casino, in tennis shoes, when it was illegal in California. And I got paid 200 bucks to show up and 200 bucks to win. I didn’t tell my mom, because I knew she’d be pissed. And that’s the start of my career, and it’s grown to this.”

On devoting his life to the sport: “One of the things that was unique to me was that I didn’t care about money (or) anything else. I was just going to do what I wanted to do and focus all my time and energy into that. So being one of the guys with little to gain but following his passion, who was intelligent and hardworking. I was devoting my life to a sport when it wasn’t a great career path. So that’s kind of my contribution. I can’t take credit for people thinking I’m cool or whatever. Thank you for that. I mean, I didn’t plan that out. I was just being myself and then had a great time that was kind of holding me on a pedestal from there.”

Faber on what he will do next: “I’d love to stay involved (with the UFC) in some level. But there are also a lot of things I want to focus on. It’s not like I have everything set up, but it’s also not like I’m going to be starting new and figuring out what I want to be doing. I have a ton of projects that I’ve been working on. I learned a lot about people, about business, about just life in general through this process. It’s not like I’m set for life, I mean. I’m hopefully going to be growing to be an old dude, and I’m going to have to figure out the next phase of things, and I’m looking forward to that.”