A Country Boy Can Survive Retirement: Matt Hughes Can Walk Away From MMA

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Going into UFC 135, Matt Hughes had a lot of questions to answer about his future in MMA. After stringing together a trio of victories, and then a flash knockout to longtime rival B.J Penn. With a tough matchup with Josh Koscheck looming, one question remained: Did Hughes have anything left after a career spent as one of the most dominant welterweights of all time? With “A Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank Williams Junior blaring through Denver, and Pat Miletich escorting him to the cage, “Kos” loomed as a final test for the former champion that he was about to fail.

Knocked out by the big hands of Koscheck, Hughes did something curious after the loss. Instead of announcing his retirement, like some thought, he asked to be put on the shelf for a while by the UFC. While Hughes probably will never say the phrase retire, and will instead fade away, one imagines that Hughes is facing a long road back if he chooses to do so. And here’s the thing that keeps coming to mind.

He doesn’t need to.

Matt Hughes can walk away from MMA as one of the great welterweights, and one of the best fighters, who has ever walked the planet. His dominance as welterweight champion still looms large over the head of the current champion, and the man in the discussion as the best fighter on the planet in Georges St. Pierre, and still marks him as one of the dominant champions of the first big era of the UFC. Hughes will be the guy always held over GSP, too, when it comes to the discussion of that fighter’s legacy despite GSP finishing Hughes the second two times in their trilogy of fights.

Hughes also did nearly everything a top UFC fighter could’ve. He coached multiple seasons of “The Ultimate Fighter,” had two thrilling trilogies with both GSP and Penn, and had two reigns as champion that hold up to any in UFC history. He even had a late winning streak that showed flashes of the Hughes that helped turn GSP from a contender to a dominant champion. He’s been in, or close to, the main event of nearly every card he’s been on. He’s accomplished everything a fighter could want to.

Walking away right now saves Hughes from a lot of indignities that a lot of fighters suffer on their way down from the peaks of MMA. Chuck Liddell was knocked out repeatedly in violent ways; Wanderlei Silva is following the same path. Hughes has been knocked out twice in successive fashion and one doesn’t need to wonder if his chin has the same level of durability it used to.

It doesn’t.

Penn and Koscheck both caught Hughes with big shots, of course, but there are only a certain amount of times you can be knocked out in combat sports before you lose any durability. Hughes is reaching that point and anything further would be watching Liddell go out on his shield repeatedly. At this point in his career even if he can prove that he has a durable chin, and these were both flukes, he hasn’t shown that he can even fight at the highest levels. He could take “interesting” fights but anything against a top notch opponent would be disrespectful to the career he worked hard to build.

Matt Hughes walked away from UFC 135 in the same spot he came into it: as a Hall of Famer and one of the two men you could call the greatest welterweight champion in UFC history. Any fights against a top contender or prospect he hasn’t fought already, from Rory McDonald to Jon Fitch, would end in a similar way as his fight against the “Ultimate Fighter” semi-finalist. Matt Hughes can walk away with his head high from MMA; if he can survive as a professional fighter for a long time, a country boy can survive into retirement with his head held high as one of the best fighters to “hook ‘em up.”