Last month, Luke Rockhold stated that he has no interest in fighting, and he apparently still feels the same way.
Rockhold’s statement was brief, but now the former UFC middleweight champion has opened up about his most recent knockout loss to Jan Blachowicz at UFC 239 and his fighting future.
“You know, it was just – it’s not exactly what it used to be for me,” Rockhold said in an interview with Submission Radio. “I feel like I rushed. I rushed things, I wasn’t as relaxed. I tried to force an issue, an easier way out of the fight, which I thought would be a lot easier, then I got caught up in that style, and I paid for it. So, I believe, obviously if I fought a different fight, it might be a different story.
“I just – I don’t have the passion I once had. There’s a lot of other things that go into fighting, politically and everything else that goes behind it. So, I don’t know. It’s not the same as it used to be. I don’t have the hunger and the passion that I used to have for fighting at this time, so I’m gonna take a break. Take a long break.”
Rockhold (16-5 MMA, 6-4 UFC) will make a return to combat sports later this month, but it’s not fighting. He is expected to take part in a grappling match vs. Nick Rodriguez at Polaris 12 on Nov. 30, but insists it’s not a step towards returning to the octagon.
“I mean, this is just kind of fun for me. This little Polaris thing just happened to pop up, they kept asking about it, and it’s fun,” Rockhold said. “It’s an opportunity to go out and kind of keep myself goal-oriented. I’m gonna go train, but not take it crazy seriously. It’s jiu-jitsu. So, it’s not a fight. It’s not a fight. This is not like my comeback. This is jiu-jitsu. And everyone wants to call jiu-jitsu fighting, but it’s not fighting. It’s definitely not fighting.”
If this is it for Rockhold, who was able to capture both the Strikeforce and UFC middleweight titles, he is happy with what he has achieved in MMA. He admits it’s been hard to reignite that fire, considering that he’s reached the pinnacle in both organizations.
“It’s been going on for a while, I’d say,” Rockhold said on losing his passion for fighting. “But I think once you reach the top, once you reach your goal, and that’s in fighting especially, it’s like there’s a sense of relief. And coming down off that and trying to find the hunger and the passion to keep pursuing this lifestyle, which is fighting, it’s tough.
“I don’t know. I’ve been fighting for a long time. I was at the top of the chain with Strikeforce, but there was still that itch, the what if, all the questions that everyone had. So, to go out there and prove myself in the UFC, to obviously take a hard loss from Vitor (Belfort) and climb back up and take it, it’s a different mindset preceding and following that, and I don’t know. I just – I’d say after that, at that point it was a little different, everything was a little different.”
Rockhold, 35, did try to regain that motivation by moving up to 205 pounds, but was quickly shut down by Blachowicz. It was his third stoppage loss in four fights. The move up to light heavyweight was to prevent the depletion of his body, making that cut down to middleweight. But Rockhold admits that the gap between weight classes is a little too large.
And while he’s not completely ruling out a return to fighting, it’s all about finding the right motivation.
“Anything could happen,” Rockhold said. “It’s like, you can’t fight for the rest of your life. If things change in my mind, and I feel like I wanna pursue, if my body can take – there’s a weight problem with both weight classes being caught in between weight classes and where you wanna go, where you feel the best. So, I’m not gonna do it just to go do it. It’s, if I felt good enough to go and compete with the best guy in either respective weight class, that would happen. But otherwise, right now I’m enjoying kind of pursing other things in life. There’s a lot left for me to do. I can do a lot of things in life. And unlike the rest of these guys, who are pretty stuck in their world, I’m not trying to beat it into the ground, I don’t need to or have to.”
Luke Rockhold opens up on MMA future: 'I don't have the passion I once had'