UFC strawweight Anna Elmose announces MMA retirement: 'I have lost my fighter heart'

Anna Elmose has decided to walk away from her career as an MMA fighter following a unanimous decision loss to Amanda Cooper at UFC Fight Night 99 in November.

Elmose (3-2 MMA, 0-2 UFC), who competed twice under the UFC banner and in just five professional MMA bouts overall, said she unexpectedly lost the passion to compete. Because of that, she has no desire to go on if the motivation needed to compete at an elite level isn’t there.

“Panda” said she was driven for victory against Cooper in a UFC Fight Night 99 pre-fight interview with MMAjunkie, but once she got in the octagon, couldn’t execute the way she wanted and was outworked by Cooper over the course of three rounds.

For her, the fight against Cooper was enough to realize a career in combat sports was no longer her best path in life. So she decided to announce her retirement via social media.

“I’m retiring as a fighter,” Elmose wrote. “I’ve understood, that I no longer have the necessary desire, will to win or hunger to compete. I have no excuses for my performance against Amanda Cooper. I’ve never been in better shape, I had awesome sparring and the weight cut went according to plan. I simply couldn’t get my pulse up, didn’t feel any kind of adrenaline rush and basically felt content.

“When I entered the Octagon in Belfast, I didn’t get any kind of buzz at all. I just felt flat, and it was weird to experience, because I didn’t understand it at first. But when I knocked my opponent down, and I didn’t get the rush to finish the fight, as I usually do, I knew that my edge and desire simply was gone. I honestly had no idea until the fight, that I have lost my “fighter heart”, and I really didn’t see it coming. I apologize to all I’ve let down, but I don’t have it in me anymore.

“I live a very good life now, and I’ve realized, that I don’t have anything to fight for anymore. At the age of 32, other aspects of life now make more sense to me, but I don’t regret a thing.”

Elmose, 32, joined the UFC roster as a short-notice replacement against Germaine de Randamie at UFC Fight Night 87 in May. Typically a flyweight, Elmose was significantly undersized by de Randamie in the bantamweight bout and paid for it in the form of a first-round knockout loss.

Since the UFC doesn’t current have a 125-pound division, Elmose, the only women’s Danish fighter in UFC history, dropped 20 pounds to strawweight for the matchup with Cooper. It didn’t help her perform that much better, though, because she simply couldn’t get going in the fight.

Elmose took that fight as a sign to do something else, although she didn’t mention exactly what post-fighting life could entail for her.

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