Former WEC and current UFC featherweight fighter Javier ‘Showtime’ Vasquez has announced his retirement from the sport at the age of 36.
“I don’t see a need nor a want to fight anymore,” Vasquez stated on Sherdog Radio on Sunday night. “I do have fights left on my contract, but I just don’t want to do it. I didn’t want to be that guy that everyone is begging to retire. I did everything in my career on my terms.”
A highly talented but injury-prone Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, Vasquez’s MMA career began all the way back in 1998, but he’s perhaps best known for being a seasoned campaigner in the WEC’s ranks
Vasquez fought just once for the UFC back in June of 2011 against Joe Stevenson which ended in a decision victory, but despite that he reveals that this was the fight that brought him to the conclusion that he didn’t want to compete any more.
“When I got back to the locker room after the Stevenson fight, I just knew I had nothing left. I had nothing left to prove. I knew my knee and my body had definitely had enough. I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. The fear of stepping into the cage is just the fear I didn’t want to experience anymore.”
He didn’t officially make his retirement known at the time, but has now finally confirmed his decision leaving him with an overall 16-5 career record.
It’s relatively rare for a fighter to end his career on a win, particularly after just joining the sport’s biggest organization, but there’s nothing like going out on your own terms, and given that Velasquez has been nursing injury problems for a number of years and has his own gym to focus on it seems like a wise choice.
