Frankie Edgar ‘obviously heartbroken’ after knockout loss in retirement fight: ‘It f****** sucks but how can I complain’
Frankie Edgar is putting things in perspective after suffering a knockout loss to Chris Gutierrez at UFC 281 in what will serve as the final fight of his career.
Addressing the loss for the first time since Saturday, the former UFC lightweight champion admitted that he absolutely didn’t want things to end that way but he also knows that’s just the brutal nature of mixed martial arts.
“Obviously heartbroken,” Edgar said on his podcast Champ and the Tramp. “No way that’s how I wanted to go. But that’s the way it goes.
“You saw [the knockout], everybody saw it. It f****** sucks but how can I complain to be honest. People were cheering my name the whole time, before, during, after. I know I work hard to get where I got. Like f****** hard, very hard. I sacrificed a lot my whole life. I put my all into my athletic career since day one but who the f*** am I to complain? There’s people out there that work hard and they just make it by. I know both sides of that. I’m just trying to be grateful for what I accomplished. Grateful for the ride I had.”
Perhaps the toughest reality that Edgar had to face following his loss was knowing that his wife and children were sitting just a few feet away from the cage as he prepared to do battle for the final time.
It was actually the first time Edgar’s daughter was old enough to attend one of his events, which makes the sting of this particular defeat hurt that much more because his kids had to witness it.
“I didn’t want my kids to see me go out that way,” Edgar said. “My family there, all that stuff. Cause they’ve got to go deal with it, too.
“My kids are old enough now where kids are scumbags. I’m not going to say where, who or which kid but one of my kids does something in their group and one of the group kids starts taking s***, saying this and that. Either that kid’s being a young scumbag kid or his parents don’t teach him no f****** manners. Whatever, they’re kids in the end but it sucks my kids got to deal with it.”
Edgar offered no excuses for the loss after Gutierrez timed a jumping knee strike that landed flush and sent the New Jersey native crashing to the canvas.
While he’ll undoubtedly get bombarded with all the reasons why the knockout happened, Edgar maintains that he just got caught and that’s how the sport goes sometimes.
“Either I’m slowing down a step or I just don’t see f****** nothing up the middle,” Edgar said. “Damn, the last three up the middle. I guess I don’t have to worry about that stuff no more.
“But again, I’m a very prideful person and all these people ‘my chin, his chin, his chin.’ I don’t know if my chin’s that bad. I know how I am in the gym. That first combo hit me with that spinning back fist. It was pretty f****** hard, I ate it pretty good. Knees and kicks are just a different animal. I didn’t see them coming either but I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of and I’ve really got nothing to hang my head about.”
Edgar calls the loss “embarrassing” but he’s also putting the moment behind him to focus on the future where he plans to get into coaching and helping his kids achieve their own dreams now that his fighting career is over.
It may take a while before the sting from this loss doesn’t hurt anymore but Edgar knows time heals all wounds and he’ll keep moving forward because that’s what he’s always done.
“Now it’s over. It’s in my rearview. It’s just f****** close in the rearview right now,” Edgar said. “But it’s going to get further away like everything does and in the big scheme of things, how f****** important is it? Is it? I don’t know. It would have been nice to go out on a high note. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I thought I was going to have.
“What sucks, too, I didn’t even get to f****** go. Maybe it would have been better if I just went and put on another f****** heartfelt performance and lost a f****** decision or something like that. I was able to walk away with some bruises knowing that I f****** put it on the line again. I put it on the line but in a different way. I really didn’t get to show it and remember, I didn’t know what I was going to do after the last time this happened and I came back because I felt pretty good. My body felt pretty good to do it and I gave it that shot and it didn’t work out. I’ve got to be honest with myself. I don’t want to be but I’ve got to be. Let’s be real. It’s in the past, it’s behind me.”