Trading Shots: Downes , Fowlkes on retiring from MMA, being haunted by exit

In this week’s Trading Shots, MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes and former UFC/WEC fighter Danny Downes discuss what it takes to retire – and stay that way – after being sucked in by the vortex of professional cage fighting.

Fowlkes: Danny, is it me or does it seem like retiring from MMA is the hot thing to do right now? Just recently you’ve got guys like Quinn Mulhern and Din Thomas hanging ‘em up, women’s MMA veteran Julie Kedzie calling it quits, and then you’ve got Georges St-Pierre “stepping away.” Meanwhile, Anderson Silva, who many of us thought might retire after snapping his leg in half, was reportedly asking his surgeons when he can start training again (boy, they must have some good drugs at that hospital).

You have some personal experience with retiring from this sport. Do you think fans and media really understand what goes into that decision? Seems like we get caught up on legacy and brain health and stuff like that, but more often what I’m hearing from the fighters who actually retire is more along the lines of, “I’m tired/have had enough/am being bypassed by the new generation.”

Downes: I think when most fans react to fighters’ retirements, they think, “Oh, it’s because they can’t compete in the big leagues anymore.” That may be part of the story, but it misses the big picture. If Kedzie, Mulhern and I all won our last few fights, would we have retired? I can’t say. Winning may not solve everything (GSP illustrates that), but it does make it easier to tolerate the BS that goes along with being a professional fighter. As Deltron 3030 put it, “Crises precipitate change,” and when you fight, every loss is a soul-crushing crisis. When you hit that bottom, you start to analyze your situation. Do I want to keep doing this to myself?

People on the outside may be able to objectively state that someone should quit, but there are emotional considerations. In the same way that some military personnel dichotomize the world between civilians and military, pro fighters have an “us and them” view. Once you give up fighting, you become one of the others. You’re still friends with your teammates, but you don’t share in the daily grind. You don’t have that same connection. Giving up competition is giving up a lifestyle, and for some people, it’s like giving up your identity.

So Ben, as an even bigger outsider than me, what do you think? Why should we care? Obviously these life events are big deals to individual fighters, but why should fans care? Aren’t these retiring fighters just men/women who couldn’t make it on the big show?

Fowlkes: I think you just hit on something that we sometimes miss when we talk about this issue: Retiring means giving up a lifestyle. It’s like those people you see on documentaries who grew up in one of the more severe religions that they no longer truly subscribe to and yet can’t quite bring themselves to break away from because, well, there go your friends, your family, your everything. You might be miserable if you stay, but at least you’ll know who you are – and so will the people around you.

As far as why we, the fans and media, should care, I think there’s this sometimes misguided but always well-meaning protective impulse among fight fans. We’ve seen what happens to fighters who stay in this too long, and we’d rather not see it in anyone else, ever again. You could argue that this springs at least partially from our own deeply buried guilt over how much we enjoy seeing people hurt one another for sport, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. Everybody wants to party, but nobody wants to stick around long enough to help clean up. Maybe we make ourselves feel better by telling certain fighters they should quit. If they keep going after that, hey, you can’t blame us, right? We tried to tell ‘em.

Still, it’s one thing to quit because your body and brain can’t take it anymore. It’s another thing to quit because you can no longer keep up, which is what Mulhern and Thomas both pretty much said about their respective retirements. Thomas pointed out how much better MMA fighters have gotten overall in the past decade or so, and I think he’s totally right. But then, isn’t that what we were hoping would happen in this sport? To see the old guard dropping off now that it’s happening, isn’t that both the best and, in a different way, most depressing outcome we could’ve hoped for?

Downes: In other sports, the changing of the guard occurs much slower. MMA’s growth has been so rapid the few years that the stars of recent memory have already become outclassed. It’s a difficult situation because even a fading star in team sports can contribute something. Even if they have a smaller role or are being eclipsed by a young star, there are still reasons to cheer. In an individual sport, though, what can you contribute when you don’t win? There’s nothing glamorous about getting knocked out or submitted. Look at what happened at the end of Chuck Liddell‘s career. People treated him like a joke, and he’s one of the most prominent fighters ever. Fans, media, coaches and others may say they do it because they care, but it’s hard not to think of it as condescending.

I guess I don’t understand why you might call it depressing. Is it a sense of nostalgia? Is it like when one of your favorite childhood cartoons is on Netflix, and you watch it as an adult only to realize that it’s terrible? Out with the old and in with the new! It’s true in consumerism and the sports world. In a few years there will be a new level of fighter that will eclipse even the stars of today. Unless we start a UFC Masters division, isn’t this cycle an inevitability? What place do the Din Thomas’s of the world hold in the MMA chronicles?

Fowlkes: I guess it’s depressing because whenever I hear fighters throw out cliches like “You’re only as good as your last fight,” it feels like an accusation. Like they’re saying, “We know that we are mostly interchangeable and disposable to you people, and that our blood is but a passing entertainment, and that’s cool (even though it isn’t).” I guess a part of me wants to see that proven wrong, and when I hear guys like Thomas say that he’s retiring secure in the knowledge that fans won’t remember him at all, I feel bad, even if – or maybe because – I can’t tell him it’s not true. In the words of Marlo Stanfield, I want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.

As someone who’s been on the other side, how can you not hate fans (and, sure, also media) if you think that’s how they view you? If you’re here and then you’re gone without it meaning much to anyone but you, how are you supposed to make sense of that? As you pointed out, even “The Iceman” ended on a sour, maybe even condescending, note. What hope does that leave for a Quinn Mulhern?

Downes: Fans tell fighters, “You wouldn’t have a paycheck if it weren’t for me!” Fighters tell promoters, “You wouldn’t have a paycheck if it weren’t for me!” Promoters tell fighters (you guessed it), “You wouldn’t have a paycheck if it weren’t for me!” It doesn’t matter what business it is, every party thinks they are the most valuable piece of it. Perhaps the cynical truth of the matter is that we all just exploit one another. When you fight in a cage for money, it’s hard to claim some sort of moral high ground.

Despite all that, it’s hard not to get angry. Fans and critics can tell you to not take it personally, but that’s a hard thing to do. My last fight against Ramsey Nijem was the lowest point of my career. Imagine your biggest professional failure. Now imagine that failure happening in front of thousands of people. Imagine your family and friends flying out from all over the country to watch you fail. Then, after your embarrassment is complete, a few thousand strangers decide to give you advice and/or just tell you, “you f–ing suck.” I think about that night all the time. I would even be bold enough to say that it haunts me.

Do other fighters suffer from the same thing? Some do, some don’t. The decision to walk away is a difficult one. There are personal, emotional and physical factors. Regardless of what they say, Thomas and Mulhern made one of the most difficult choices of their lives, but things don’t get any easier from there. It won’t be in a cage, but they have a lot more fights ahead of them.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.