Rory MacDonald has been thinking about hanging up the gloves for a while now. But after this past weekend, “The Red King” knew for certain that the game wasn’t in him anymore.
MacDonald, who lost his first round KO to Dilano Taylor in the semifinals of the PFL Playoffs welterweight finals, announced his resignation from MMA on Saturday. On Wednesday, MacDonald explained that this was a long time coming.
“It’s been on my mind for a while,” MacDonald told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I feel like it’s been quite a few fights, actually, where I’ve questioned it but just wasn’t ready. It felt that I had the potential to have that career revival. It was a goal I wanted to achieve. I knew I could perform certain tasks in practice, but it wasn’t possible to accomplish them in the real world. Unfortunately, there’s a difference between what you can do in the practice room and under those lights. It’s just that I don’t possess that special thing or that energy, the heart, to get out there and do it.
” Every fight has been decreasing for some time now. It’s becoming more apparent. The season I finished was my final hurrah. This was my last chance to succeed. If I succeeded, I’d just continue working towards my goals. But if not, it will end in defeat. And this last fight, even if I had put up a better fight and lost, or even if I had won, just the feeling I had in that fight was confirmation to me that this isn’t for me anymore. It’s not who I am anymore. So I’ve got to listen to that. …
“Just being under those lights and face-to-face with your opponent and not wanting to be there, not wanting to push through that intensity that you meet when you’re in a fight, when someone’s trying to attack you. You feel that, that intensity. You usually have mental resistance to this, which is why it doesn’t work for me. I don’t have that passion to keep doing this with 100 percent of myself anymore, and I think that’s confirmation to me that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”
When asked how long he’s been thinking about stepping away, MacDonald revealed that he first gave it consideration when he faced Gegard Mousasi for the Bellator middleweight belt in 2018.
“It was when I fought Mousasi,” MacDonald said. “That fight I didn’t prepare like I should have prepared. This was my beginning. After the injury I had in the Lima fight and the injuries I had from the second Lawler fight, it really started to play with my head. Being on my couch for three months, not being able to walk after the Lima fight, it just started — I tried to ignore those voices but your body and your flesh kind of cries out to you. It was there, even though I tried to forget it as much as possible. You can only take so much punishment over the years. You have to be willing to go through that and I think I just sort of came to my wit’s end.”
MacDonald noted that this change in mentality coincided with a number of other life changes, particularly in finding Christianity and starting a family, which left him “a little bit mixed up.” However, MacDonald says, he’s glad he continued fighting because had he walked away then, he’s not sure he’d feel the same sense of completion.
“I think I needed to. I needed to get it right out of my system,” MacDonald said. Now, I was obviously disappointed that I had been knocked out when I left the cage but it’s all good. I am now at peace with it. I know for certain that I don’t want to fight anymore, and if I would have maybe hung it up before, I might have circled back to it and it would have been more of a drawn out process than it is now. It was enough for me to get the job done …
” It’s been quite heavy on my shoulders fighting for the past few months so it is definitely a relief. It was like a weight had fallen off my shoulders when I decided to retire after the fight. My heart just felt lighter… I feel good about my decision. There is nothing I can do in this sport. I really gave it my all, I invested everything I could into this year in my final push and it didn’t work out. I’m happy with what I did. It was my best effort and I leave happy knowing I made a good job .”
MacDonald is only 33 but he leaves the sport having accomplished a remarkable number of things. In what was arguably the most memorable fight ever, he became the Bellator welterweight champion. He then challenged Robbie Lawler for the UFC title of welterweight at UFC .
As for what’s next, MacDonald says he will “always be a martial artist” but isn’t sure how involved he will stay with MMA, because he never got involved in MMA for the fame or celebrity.
“As far as career, I think I’m probably going to take a different avenue,” he said. He said, “I will always be a Martial Artist so I’ll always go to the gym training. But as far as me being involved in mixed martial arts, I don’t know. I don’t know how involved I’ll be. We’ll see how far the road takes me. …
” I never got in this to be recognized or any other reason. All the messages that I get are so touching. I never would have imagined that in my retirement. But I don’t really have a lot to say. I came in this sport to achieve something personal. It was a very personal thing for me to get involved in this sport and what I’ve done in it. It was not something I thought would attract any attention. It wasn’t a popular thing when I first started, and now that it’s become a major sport and people are paying attention to it, it never really changed for me. I’m not really interested in what people have to say or getting on TV or anything like that. This was not something that I wanted to do, such as giving a speech after a fight and getting recognition. Move on and enjoy your life
“Obviously, it’s scary. It’s the only thing I know. This was when I was 14. I began fighting professionally as 16, and then I switched to fighting, becoming a world champion at 16.. So it’s all I’ve ever known, and now I have a family. It’s scary to change careers, but it is exciting. This is a new adventure and I look forward to the next chapter.”
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