Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Now that the UFC bantamweight title is officially vacant, Henry Cejudo has a few farewell words for Dana White and the UFC.
With each passing day it seems more and more likely that Henry Cejudo’s sudden retirement from MMA wasn’t some kind of negotiation power play. Or, perhaps, even if it was all a tactic to get a big money fight, it’s not about to result in him getting back in the cage anytime soon.
Cejudo was recently removed from the UFC’s personal ranking system, and his bantamweight title has been officially vacated. And while his manager insisted that he felt ‘Triple C’ would be fighting again in a few months, Cejudo took to Twitter to send a farewell message to UFC president Dana White, as well as his coaches and fans.
Thank you for the awesome experiences uncle @danawhite I will forever be grateful. Thank you for taking a chance on the sport that people thought would never make it. To all my coaches and fans it been a wonderful ride. Triple C is out #retiredontop pic.twitter.com/ZoHa3asoDU
— Henry Cejudo (@HenryCejudo) May 25, 2020
Cejudo walks away from his MMA career on the back of a six fight unbeaten streak, in which he picked up the flyweight and bantamweight titles—following a pair of 2016 losses to Demetrious Johnson and Joseph Benavidez. In the years following his first title challenge against ‘Mighty Mouse,’ Cejudo avenged that loss (albeit controversially) and went on to defeat T.J. Dillashaw, Marlon Moraes, and finally former bantamweight king Dominick Cruz.
It’s a remarkable run of success to close out the former Olympic gold medalist’s time in the UFC. And while he seems set on hanging ‘em up right now, at just 33-years-old, there’s plenty of time left for a comeback. Until that day, however, hopefully he enjoys life after cage-fighting.