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You are here: Home > Boxing classes > A Country Boy Can Survive Retirement: Matt Hughes Can Walk Away From MMA

A Country Boy Can Survive Retirement: Matt Hughes Can Walk Away From MMA

Posted in Boxing classes | September 26th, 2011

Going into UFC 135, Matt Hughes had a lot of questions to answer about his destiny in MMA. After stringing together a contingent of victories, and afterwards a peep knockout to longtime opposition B.J Penn. With a tough matchup with Josh Koscheck looming, one doubt remained: Did Hughes have anything left after a career spent as one of a many widespread welterweights of all time? With “A Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank Williams Junior grating by Denver, and Pat Miletich escorting him to a cage, “Kos” loomed as a final exam for a former champion that he was about to fail.

Knocked out by a vast hands of Koscheck, Hughes did something extraordinary after a loss. Instead of announcing his retirement, like some thought, he asked to be put on a shelf for a while by a UFC. While Hughes substantially will never contend a word retire, and will instead blur away, one imagines that Hughes is confronting a prolonged highway behind if he chooses to do so. And here’s a thing that keeps entrance to mind.

He doesn’t need to.

Matt Hughes can travel divided from MMA as one of a good welterweights, and one of a best fighters, who has ever walked a planet. His prevalence as welterweight champion still looms vast over a conduct of a stream champion, and a male in a contention as a best warrior on a world in Georges St. Pierre, and still outlines him as one of a widespread champions of a initial vast epoch of a UFC. Hughes will be a man always reason over GSP, too, when it comes to a contention of that fighter’s bequest notwithstanding GSP finishing Hughes a second dual times in their trilogy of fights.

Hughes also did scarcely all a tip UFC warrior could’ve. He coached mixed seasons of “The Ultimate Fighter,” had dual stirring trilogies with both GSP and Penn, and had dual reigns as champion that reason adult to any in UFC history. He even had a late winning strain that showed flashes of a Hughes that helped spin GSP from a contender to a widespread champion. He’s been in, or tighten to, a categorical eventuality of scarcely each label he’s been on. He’s achieved all a warrior could wish to.

Walking divided right now saves Hughes from a lot of indignities that a lot of fighters humour on their approach down from a peaks of MMA. Chuck Liddell was knocked out regularly in aroused ways; Wanderlai Silva is following a same path. Hughes has been knocked out twice in unbroken conform and one doesn’t need to consternation if his chin has a same turn of continuance it used to.

It doesn’t.

Penn and Koscheck both hold Hughes with vast shots, of course, though there are usually a certain volume of times we can be knocked out in quarrel sports before we remove any durability. Hughes is reaching that indicate and anything serve would be examination Liddell go out on his defense repeatedly. At this indicate in his career even if he can infer that he has a durable chin, and these were both flukes, he hasn’t shown that he can even quarrel during a tip levels. He could take “interesting” fights though anything opposite a tip nick competition would be unpleasant to a career he worked tough to build.

Matt Hughes walked divided from UFC 135 in a same mark he came into it: as a Hall of Famer and one of a dual group we could call a biggest welterweight champion in UFC history. Any fights opposite a tip contender or awaiting he hasn’t fought already, from Rory McDonald to Jon Fitch, would finish in a identical approach as his quarrel opposite a “Ultimate Fighter” semi-finalist. Matt Hughes can travel divided with his conduct high from MMA; if he can tarry as a veteran warrior for a prolonged time, a nation child can tarry into retirement with his conduct reason high as one of a best fighters to “hook ‘em up.”