Longtime Octagon Girl Brittney Palmer opened up about her decision to walk away from the promotion after more than a decade with the promotion.
Palmer, who made her debut as a ring card girl at UFC 125 in 2011, announced her retirement in December at the 15th Annual Fighters Only World MMA Awards during her acceptance speech after winning the Ringcard Girl of the Year award
“I’ve done it for a long time and I think I’ve always had the question so many times,” Palmer said in an interview with MMA Junkie. ‘When are you going to quit? When are you going to give another girl a shot?’ I get these interview questions, and so I think about it. I’m 36 years old. I always said that once my art career started to level up to where my UFC career is and I wasn’t able to commit to both evenly, that I would have to make the decision. It was just time. You feel it.”
“… When I found out I won Ring Girl of the Year, I was actually in New York City working that event. All of a sudden, I was like, ‘You know what? Wouldn’t it just be epic if I could use this opportunity, where I have the mic, to retire.’ We don’t really get too much of a voice, so to have that opportunity I thought was just a great way to settle out the year and my career with UFC – and yeah, I did it.”
Brittney Palmer Continues to Work with the promotion behind-the-scenes
Outside of the UFC, Palmer has established herself as an accomplished contemporary artist. Though fight fans may no longer see her strutting her stuff cageside, Palmer still maintains a role with the Las Vegas-based promotion in an artistic capacity.
“I paint for the UFC now,” Palmer said. “I do their t-shirts. The last shirt that I did was for International Fight Week. … I’ve done Conor McGregor shirts. I’ve painted Jon Jones shirts. I painted, for Reebok, the UFC shirts. That’s going to be something that I want to continuously do.
“I’m working on a mural project right now, hopefully as long as everything goes as planned, I’ll be painting it during UFC 300. I will always kind of be in that world of painting with the fighters, just because I have such a good relationship with UFC and I will genuinely still watch the fights. I want to continuously be creating for them.”