Josh Thomson urges Tony Ferguson to seriously consider walking away from fighting.

Tony Ferguson currently finds himself on a six-fight losing streak, with four of those defeats coming by way of finish. These losses have looked rather lopsided at times, making many wonder whether or not it’s time for “El Cucuy” to hang up his gloves for good at 39-years-old. One man who seems to share this sentiment is former UFC veteran Josh Thomson.

Thomson took to his podcast, “Weighing In,” to offer his thoughts on the situation. He believes, at this rate, Ferguson could be taking off as much as 10 years off his life. Thomson believes that Ferguson’s fights against Justin Gaethje and Charles Oliveira alone have greatly impacted his well being. He speaks from experience, as Thomson suffered the same fate after his own fight with Ferguson in 2015.

“It’s 10 years off his life,” Thomson said.(via MMA Fighting) “Here’s the thing though, the Justin Gaethje fight and the Charles Oliveira fight, those two fights alone — and I speak from experience because it happened to me with [Ferguson] — at that age, the damage he took in that Gaethje fight, it changes you. It changes your body. It changes the way you think. … It’s not even so much [doing it] a couple times, it’s sometimes just one time. And at the age that he was at, I believe he was 36 or 37 at the time of the Gaethje fight, you’re not the same. And after the Tony fight, I was never the same. I never fought the same after that. I fought more conservative, I was always a step behind.

“I was in the back after that [Ferguson loss] for about probably 45 minutes to an hour, shivering in the shower. The shower was on hot steam water and my body was shivering. I couldn’t control myself. I was shivering so much. I’d lost so much blood, my body was in shock, and it took me a long time that night to actually get my body to stop shivering. I’d say it took me probably about two hours, three hours for my body not to shiver. And I had sweats on, I had sweaters on. We were in San Diego, by the way; the weather was nice. It’s just, you’re not the same fighter,” Thomson said.

Thomson believes he knows why Ferguson continues to fight

As for the reason Thomson believes Ferguson is still fighting, he suspects the former interim lightweight champion is chasing the fight he never got with Khabib Nurmagomedov. When Ferguson was in the midst of his tear through the 155-pound division, riding an unprecedented 12-fight win streak, he and Nurmagomedov were scheduled to face off on multiple occasions.

However, the matchup was seemingly cursed, each time being canceled for different reasons. It would’ve been one of the biggest fights in UFC history. Thomson suspects Ferguson is still chasing a fight of similar magnitude.

“I think he’s chasing that fight that never happened against Khabib,” Thomson said. “And I’m not saying he’s trying to get the Khabib fight. I’m saying that he’s chasing that one big fight. He never got it. He was always right there. He never got the one big fight. He never got to fight Conor [McGregor]. He never got to fight Khabib. He never got the fight, that one.

“If you don’t want to retire, cool, do what you want. But you’ve got to take a good look in the mirror and just realize that even at 40 years old, 41 years old … if you live another 40 years, think about, you have a whole other life ahead of you. What are you going to f****** do? You have to start thinking about that now. He’s got young kids — they’re not going to get to college until you’re 60. That goes through my mind every single time. Your kids won’t even get to college until you’re 60 years old or 58. That money that you made in your career, it’s gone. It ain’t there. What else are going to do?”