Adesanya comments on Fedor’s retirement: “That’s not how anyone should go out”

Benny A. King

Fedor Emelianenko retired earlier this month during a Heavyweight championship title fight at Bellator. This was the farewell Fedor asked for, including the opponent. Emelianenko was previously knocked out by Ryan Bader years earlier.

Many MMA stars were sad to see Fedor go on such a low note. That’s been a trend as of late with many prominent MMA stars retiring after getting knocked out. Just last year we saw Frankie Edgar, Shogun Rua and Marlon Moraes retire after devastating performances.

Emelianenko was 46 and had suffered an injury before camp so he was barely training for this event.

In an interview with Russian channel Sport24, Nemkov revealed that Emelianenko had several Visa problems that took a lot of time.

“Unfortunately Fedor wasn’t able to prepare properly for this fight. He was dealing with a back injury and there were issues with getting his visa- he first had to fly to Bahrain to apply for Visa and that didn’t work out so Fedor then had to fly to Armenia to get his visa.” Nemkov said (Sherdog).

One of the UFC champions who was sad to see him go like that is Israel Adesanya. Adesanya recently elaborated on this sad trend and went on to say he hopes to retire before he gets to that stage.

Adesanya was asked: “which is better to end career at the peak, or at 46 years old by knockout, but in title fight?”

He responded: “Nah, man, that’s not how anyone, even a great as Fedor, should go out at all. He just lost the fight. I’m sure he’s not struggling for money. He’s just a guy who loves to fight. And I love to fight as well. But I know. I guess I’ve been in the UFC for five years, right?”

“If I’m being honest, I’m not going to be here in five years. I have other things to do in life. I’ve said this on with Jon Anik and when I was talking to him on the interview, I said, You never seen my Instagram bio or any of my social media bio? UFC Fighter, Once I became a UFC fighter when I’m when I became champion, a UFC champion, I never attached myself to this.”

“I love this s**t and I’m f**king great at it, but I never attach myself to this and I’m going to leave on top. So yeah, that’s the best way. I feel like you should leave. But again, I’ve been here five years in the UFC, the win like that. We’ll see how long I’m here for, but I don’t think it’s going to be five years.”