Former UFC Champion Retires, Jon Jones Slams Daniel Cormier On Twitter

By Dana Becker

- Former UFC light heavyweight champion and Ultimate Fighter winner Rashad Evans has decided to retire from MMA. Evans made the announcement on "Ariel Helwani's MMA Show" through streamed through the ESPN Twitter account.

Evans, 38 years old, finished 19-8-1 in his career, including 14 wins inside the Octagon. Among those was his victory over Forrest Griffin for the title and his triumph in 2005 on TUF. He also scored wins over the likes of Chael Sonnen, Dan Henderson and Phil Davis.

"It's hard," Evans said (thanks to MMAjunkie for the quotes). "I don't want to go out losing, or nothing like that, but at the same time it's what I need. It's what I need to do because I feel like I have other things in life that are calling me to go, too. I thought how hard it would be for me to really say these words or really make a statement about it, but I needed to. It's part of me healing and just accepting the what-is. I can't fool myself any longer about it."

A former wrestler at Michigan State University, Evans suffered a 53-second knockout to Anthony Smith earlier this month at UFC 225. He has worked with FOX Sports during pre- and post-fight coverage over the past few years.

"I can say for certainty that I won't fight again," Evans said. "I feel like there's other things in life I want to do. I know there's other things in life I want to do. It's so much that goes into it all. At one point in my life I felt as if fighting was everything ? it was everything. But now, I put life second. But now life is taking over and fighting is becoming second. Competing in a sport like MMA where you have a lot of guys who haven't been to the top of the mountain, who haven't experienced the things I've experienced, they're hungry for it. For me, I was just lukewarm."

- It didn't take Jon Jones long to fire back at UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier. After Cormier made comments stating he wouldn't give Jones a platform to exchange with him, "Bones" took to Twitter to unleash several interesting comments.

Comments

Recommended