36-year old Paul Felder announced his retirement from the sport of MMA earlier this week, on-air during UFC Vegas 27
Felder called time on his impressive UFC career at UFC Vegas 27. The lightweight veteran retired with 23 fights on his resume, winning 17 and losing 6.
‘The Irish Dragon’ joined the UFC in the year 2014, and in no time, people got to know that he was a man who never backed down. Felder was known for his tough, hard-as-nails attitude inside the Octagon.
Even for his last fight against former lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos in November last year, he took the fight on just 6-days notice, dropped 20lbs and went the full five rounds with the Brazilian. He lost the bloodbath via. a split decision.
Out of the 6 losses Felder has, only one has been via. TKO, and it came against Francisco Trinaldo in September 2016.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani of ESPN MMA, Felder claimed that the loss against Trinaldo is one of the main regrets in his long UFC career.
“There are certain fights that I know, I probably shouldn’t have taken…The Trinaldo fight was probably like one of the dumber fights that I ever took. I was begging for a fight, I was begging for a guy that was higher ranked than me. Joe Silva [ex-UFC Matchmaker] at the time was like, ‘This is the fight, take it or leave it. That’s all you’ve got. You wanted a top 15 guy, here’s your top 15 guy. It was Trinaldo in Brasilia, Brazil his home town.’ And me being me at that time, I took it.”
Felder didn’t stop there. He had a few more regrets waiting to be revealed. The most notable one among them was his high-speed weight-cuts.
Almost all the fighters have a walk around weight significantly more than their ‘fighting-division’ weight. But once the fight camp or the training camp period sets in they begin managing their diet and reduce weight accordingly.
Felder has had some trouble with weight cuts. He went to explain that as one of his regrets.
He said:
“I probably would have really focused on my diet and being a cleaner athlete year-round. It really sucks that you learn some of these lessons in your late 30s, towards the end of your career.”
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