It’s fitting that we’ve spent so much time discussing wrestlers and wrestling on MMA Fighting this week, since tonight marks the return of Antonio McKee in a fight that he claims could be his last.
According to McKee, who has unapologetically bored MMA fans from Tokyo to New Jersey throughout his 11-year career, if his fight with Luciano Azevedo at MFC 26 goes the same way almost all of his other fights have gone (i.e. resulting in a decision victory and an anaesthetized crowd) he’ll retire.
As he told me back in July: “I said, if this fight goes to a decision and it’s a boring decision, I retire. If this fight is not the fight of the night, I retire. Basically, if I don’t go out there and put on a show, just destroy and annihilate this guy, then I’m done.”
Why? Not because he doesn’t think he can compete anymore. He’s pretty sure he can not only compete, but more or less dominate any other lightweight on the planet, even at 40 years old.
No, he says he’ll quit because he’s been waiting for the sport to evolve, and, at least as far as he’s concerned, it hasn’t.