Former Strikeforce Champ Josh Thomson Announces Retirement
Josh Thomson has officially announced his retirement from mixed martial arts.
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“I can say that I’m officially retired. I can finally say it,” Thomson said (transcription via MMAFighting.com). “And the thing is that you have to say it sometimes just to say what you just said, because I realized I was taking more shots than I should have been taking. And I don’t want to live that lifestyle, I didn’t want to be in there as a punching bag to anybody. I was taking more in training – that’s the thing, people only see the ones you take in the fight. They don’t realize that you’re taking more in training too, because there’s young, talented studs in my gym. And those guys are whooping your ass too; it’s not just the one guy in the cage that you’re fighting. It’s the lead-up to it. It’s all the other shots you take in there.
“That’s the hardest part, and so when you’re telling me all the
things that [Donald
Cerrone] went through, that’s exactly what happened, and I
could see myself getting hit more often than I wanted to.”
A former Strikeforce champion, Thomson began his Bellator MMA tenure with victories over Mike Bronzoulis and Pablo Villaseca before falling to Freire via knockout. Thomson noticed that began to notice a significant difference taking punishment as his career progressed. He also pointed to the decline of former Strikeforce rival Gilbert Melendez, who has lost five straight in the UFC, as another motivating factor behind his decision.
“[Melendez has] taken more damage in probably the last three or four than he took in almost his whole career,” he said. “And I looked at myself too, and I felt like I hadn’t taken a whole lot of damage up until the Tony Ferguson fight. I took that fight, took a ton of damage in that fight. Then I went to Bellator, one fight, really no damage, second fight, really no damage, but I could also feel the difference of when I got hit and how I felt when I got hit, versus just walking through it.
“Once you know, I could come to grips with that, every day I would tell myself, ‘Dude, you’re getting hit and you feel these shots now.’ I never used to feel them. Now when you feel them you’re like, this isn’t the same, this is not what I fell in love with. This feeling of training and getting hit, it’s not the same any more.”
Thomson currently serves as an analyst for Bellator MMA, but not that long ago he was regarded as one of the top lightweight fighters in the world. In 2008, he defeated Melendez to capture Strikeforce gold before going on to compete in UFC and Bellator. Now 41 years old, the American Kickboxing Academy has compiled a 22-9 career mark with one no contest. He owns notable wins over the likes of Melendez, Nate Diaz, Gesias Cavalcante, Pat Healy, Duane Ludwig and Nam Phan, to name a few.
