Felice Herrig has announced his retirement from mixed martial arts after suffering a submission loss in her rematch with Karoline Kowalkiewicz at UFC Fight Night 207.
The fight had marked the 37-year-old Herrig’s return to action after an almost two-year layoff due to a second ACL surgery, but her attempt to avenge a split-decision loss to Kowalkiewicz back in 2018 and also pull herself out of a three-fight losing slump didn’t work out and afterwards she left her gloves in the center of the Octagon to signal her decision to call time on her career.
“I’ve known for a while that maybe my heart wasn’t in fighting anymore,” Herrig said in her post-fight interview. “I enjoyed the training process. I enjoyed everything about it. I had the two knee surgeries, and that was not the way I was going to go out in the sport. I wasn’t going to let an injury hold me back.
“I wanted to prove to myself, nobody else, just myself, that I could overcome two ACL surgeries and get back to being in the best shape of my life and come back and fight at the top level in the UFC. And I did that, but I also knew in the process that if I didn’t feel what I wanted to feel in the cage that I was going to retire.
“I just realized this wasn’t for me anymore. I don’t know if I ever really loved it.”
Herrig bows out of the sport with a 14-10 record, including a 5-5 run in the UFC, during which she beat the likes of Cortney Casey, Justine Kish, Alexa Grasso and Kaitlin Curran.
