A change in priorities influenced Carla Esparza’s decision to retire after UFC 307.
Esparza will be returning from pregnancy and childbirth for a rematch against Tecia Pennington at UFC 307 on Oct. 5 in Salt Lake City, Utah. While announcing her return fight, “Cookie Monster” also r revealed that it’ll be the last one of her career.
More recently, Esparza elaborated on her retirement decision, citing a variety of factors. Esparza noted that the unforgiving sport has often seen the best of the best take a steep fall from grace toward the end of their careers, like B.J. Penn, Anderson Silva or Tony Ferguson. While Esparza hasn’t reached a point where she is desperately hanging on to the roster, she just isn’t able to make the kind of commitment she used to after the birth of her child. And not being “all-in” feels like doing an injustice to the sport for the former two-time UFC strawweight champion.
“We’ve seen it time and time again, the sport kind of forces you out,” Esparza told MMAFighting.com. “You have devastating loss after devastating loss, and honestly, I’ve seen a lot of my heroes fighting over the years and it’s hard to watch that. And I never wanted to be that to my fans. We all lose and have bad losses. I’ve been finished and I’ve come back. And I don’t necessarily think my body’s putting me out to a place where I’m just gonna plummet, I’m going downhill. I still think I have a good amount of fight left in me, but just being older and the amount of time it takes to recover and to prepare for each training session and to avoid injury, it’s a lot. I wish I could show up to training and leave, but the amount of commitment that it takes to be at this level and to train smart is a lot. I don’t want to half-ass this sport. If I do it, I want to be all-in and I want to give this sport the attention and the time that it deserves.”
For some fighters, the decision to retire is influenced by the feeling of a lack of drive after years of brutalizing their bodies. But not for Esparza, who still feels very passionate learning in the gym even after a career spanning over nearly a decade and a half. But the 37-year-old can’t deny the toll that prizefighting takes on the body. And Esparza feels it would be selfish of her to still continue focusing on her career instead of her son.
“This decision took a lot of thought,” Esparza siad. “I always said that when this sport stopped being fun for me and when I lost my passion, that would be the time to hang it up. But that hasn’t happened. I still go to training like hungry to learn, my coaches show me something, I’m like, ‘OK, this is how I step and I gotta rotate this way.’ I’m still so passionate about learning and growing in this sport and evolving. So it wasn’t that for me. It’s so many things.
“I wish my body was where my mind is at. I think I’ve heard a lot of my teammates say once you hit 30 in the room, you start to feel it, and that’s definitely true. I’ll be turning 37 the week after the fight, so it’s definitely put a lot of years on this car. And the attention it takes to be a parent for me, and everyone does it different but I feel that being a parent is the most selfless thing I’ve ever done, and being a fighter is the most selfish thing I’ve done. The focus is all on me and what do I need to do to be the best and whatever. That’s the No. 1 for me. Now, priorities have just changed a little bit.”
Esparza became the inaugural UFC strawweight champ by beating Rose Namajunas at “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 20 finale in 2014 before losing the title to Joanna Jedrzejczyk the next year. She became strawweight champ for the second time nearly a decade later with a split-decision win in a rematch against “Thug” at UFC 274 in 2022. “Cookie Monster” lost her strap to Zhang Weili via second-round submission at UFC 281 later that year and hasn’t fought since. Esparza will now look to ride off into the sunset with a win over Pennington, whom she beat in the “TUF 20” quarterfinals via majority decision.
