Johny Hendricks told MMAjunkie Radio that he is ending his 11-year professional MMA career.
“I’m done. I’m retiring,” Hendricks said, “I am getting out of the MMA world. I’ve been thinking about this long and hard for a while. I’m gonna get back to my roots and I’m going to start coaching at All Saints. I coached a little bit of high school last year at Oak Ridge, but I’m making the move over to All Saints. I’m going to start coaching there, start doing those kinds of things.
“One of the things that’s nice is these last seven months, being home, spending time with the kids, not worrying about myself, what I need to do,” Hendricks added. “I was walking around at 200 for three weeks, I was just living the life, I go, ‘Do we really want to do this?’ I know that I’m more happy to do it, but do we want to do this? Do we want to go through the grind that I used to do. Be gone for long periods of time, put my family second and do those kinds of things? Right now I can’t say that.”
Hendricks says he made the decision about two weeks ago, but wanted to take time to figure out if it was the right thing to do before going public. He credited his wife with helping him to make the call.
As far as Hendricks is concerned, now that he’s uttered the word “retirement,” he’s done for good and has no plans of coming back barring a massive payday being floated in his direction. He’s content to train and work with the next generation of wrestlers and fighters.
“For 20 years of my life, I’ve been at the grind of mental, physical, trying to keep yourself in tip-top shape, and you know what, what I’m doing right now is I’m training some of the guys at my gym and I’m gonna miss sparring and stuff like that,” Hendricks said. “But since I’m training guys, I spar with them twice a month, so I still get sparring, I still get to work hands, I still get to do things that I enjoy. It’s like the best of both worlds for me.”