After coming up short in his second attempt to capture the UFC light heavyweight title at this past weekend’s (April 8, 2017) UFC 210 in Buffalo, Anthony “Rumble” Johnson shockingly announced his retirement, saying that he had committed to a new job and no longer had interest in fighting.
Johnson elected not to go into much detail regarding his next venture, but his coach Henri Hooft, said yesterday on The MMA Hour that ‘it has something to do with football’:
“I’m not going to go into details, because I don’t know the real details, but everybody sees his (social media) pages and it has to do with football,” Hooft said. “I don’t know, I didn’t really discuss the details, but he seems to be busy with this for awhile and enjoying it. It has something to do, totally different than with MMA, and I think if you really want to stop fighting, you really need to step away from it, because if you keep hanging in there, you’ll probably get lured back in there.
“Anthony is 33 years old, so you never know what happens in the future, but if you want to step away from it, you really need to step away from it. Or you need to become a coach, like I did after my fight career. But it’s totally different than MMA. I think it has something to do with football. If you look at his Twitter and his social media, people will find out sooner or later what’s really going on.”
Some have speculated on social media that “Rumble” has accepted a position with the Los Angeles Rams, and although Hooft couldn’t confirm this, he did imply that it was true:
“I think so,” Hooft said. “Listen, I’m a European guy. I know everything about soccer, but not much about the NFL. Sorry about that.”
The majority of the mixed martial arts community was stunned to learn of Johnson’s retirement, but Hooft was well aware of his fighter’s feelings:
“He talked about retiring and the end of his career for some time,” Hooft said. “I know he has an interest in other things he wants to do in life. We talked about it a lot, and we had an idea we talked about of getting that belt, and then probably dropping it in the middle (of the cage). That was an idea that we had, that he had, and that we talked about, but I didn’t really know on Saturday that he would retire. But I knew about his feelings and I’m not surprised.”
“Right after the fight, I was on the cage and he came to me and said, ‘I f*cked up,’ something, and I said, ‘come on, man, I know it’s hard but get up, it’s already done.’ It’s what a coach says after a loss,” Hooft said. “You cannot just, at that moment, talk about stuff. I was at the cage and said, ‘keep your head up, come on, let’s go.’ Then I stepped off and it was very busy in the cage, so I walked back to put another shirt on.
“When I was in the back, I heard that he was saying that he was retiring and looking for me and looking for other people, and I was like, ‘oh sh*t.’ I was on my way back, then I saw him at the curtain (to go back onto the arena floor). … He cried with me and he talked to me and everything, then it really [sunk in]. But I’m not surprised, because again, we talked about it. I’ve already (had) six years with Anthony. I’ve known him for so long, and these last couple of months have been difficult for all of us with all of the stuff that happened (with the Blackzilians). It was a crazy time.”
What do you make of Johnson’s decision to hang up his gloves?
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