Carlos Condit just fell short of winning the welterweight title last night in an instant classic fight with Robbie Lawler, and despite an excellent performance ‘The Natural Born Killer’ revealed post-fight that he’s now considering the possibility of hanging up his gloves.
Immediately after such a hard-fought battle is perhaps not the best time to make snap judgements about your future, but Condit seemed fairly level-headed in his reasoning while acknowledging that he’s going to take some time to figure out what’s best for him.
“It’s not really an emotional thing,” Condit said. “I’m not dejected. I have to evaluate, but yeah, there’s a possibility that might be my last one.”
By the sounds of things this wasn’t something that had just occured to Condit in the spur of the moment, but rather was something that’s been on his mind for some time.
“I’ve been at this for a long time,” Condit said. “Over 40 professional MMA and Kickboxing fights. I don’t know. I came up short tonight. Tonight was kind of like a do-or-die moment for my career. I was all in. If I got that strap, I was gonna keep fighting. If I didn’t, like I didn’t… I will have to see if I can continue to do this.”
Later, Dana White appeared to suggest that Condit had hinted that this was a possibility around the time that they first booked his title fight against Lawler, so he wasn’t surprised by what the welterweight star said.
It’d be a real shame if Condit did retire as at the age of 31 his performance last night suggests he’s still one of the best around. That being said, Condit is an intelligent man and he’ll be well aware of the kind of toll that years of competition and wars like last night’s take on both the mind and body, so you couldn’t blame him if he did decide to step away from the sport.
