Joe Lauzon Unsure About Retirement, Dana White Is
After the fight, one thing that Lauzon wasn’t too sure about was retirement, as the fighter seemed unsure about what was next.
“I was definitely crying a little bit,” Lauzon said after the fight (via Alexander K. Lee of MMA Fighting). “I was trying to keep it in as best I could. I try not to be all that emotional about stuff, I try to be a little stoic, but I was definitely feeling it. Even like, walking out before the fight, I was just looking around, we had all the people in the green shirts we printed up at my gym. I was feeling it. There’s so much that went into this. Usually you hear about, ‘Oh, it’s been eight or 10 weeks, it’s been really, really hard,’ (and) literally since April of last year I’ve been thinking about this. I was super unhappy with my last fight, and then since November, I’ve literally been in fight camp since last November. I’ve just been crushing it. Not complaining to anyone, just doing what I’m supposed to do, just silently going and torturing myself, just getting ready and then it finally was here. It was nice that it went so smoothly.”
Lauzon ended a three fight losing skid at the event and picked up his first victory in almost three years.
UFC President Dana White says that Lauzon broke a deal between them, as Lauzon was supposed to retire at UFC Boston, no matter what happened in his fight.
“Me and Joe Lauzon had a deal that he would retire after this fight, win, lose, or draw,” White said at the post-fight press conference. “And he didn’t do it. What better way to go out than tonight? He beat a real guy tonight. He beat a tough guy that I bet a lot of people didn’t think he was gonna beat and he made it look easy. This is one of those things when you’re talking to a guy who loves to fight like Joe Lauzon loves to fight and the Chuck Liddells and many, many more in the past that I’ve dealt with. It’s so hard to walk away – (they say) ‘I looked great tonight,’ and then if they lose, ‘Well, I can’t go out like this. Getting beat in my hometown in front of all my…’ It’s just…you know.”
If Lauzon does decide to hang up the gloves, it would end a professional MMA career that began almost sixteen years ago.
