Martin Kampmann: ‘The Hitman’ Retires From MMA With Regrets He Never Fought Georges St-Pierre
When it comes to MMA in general, one part of any MMA fighter’s career that needs to be considered is their retirement. However, retirement in MMA is often peculiar depending on the fighter and/or the situation. On one end of the retirement spectrum, we fighters ignoring retirement as they “fight until they die.” Ken Shamrock, Kimbo Slice, and Tito Ortiz come to mind. Yet on the other end of the spectrum, we have MMA fighters who understand when their time is up. Two such fighters stand-out for 2015. First, Cathal Pendred retired after his most-recent loss in UFC. It must have been hard to do such, because he really wanted to make sure CM Punk’s first fight was a losing effort. Secondly, Frankie Perez officially retired from MMA after he won his first and only fight in UFC.
Despite the situations surrounding any MMA fighter’s retirement, it happens to somene every single year. Now there are reports of the first retiree of 2016 as Martin Kampmann officially retires from MMA. Sadly for him, he retires with one major regret: never fighting Georges St-Pierre.
Martin Kampmann’s retirement was first announced by UFC on their official website. Apparently, “The Hitman” knew for a long time he needed to retire but for some reason, maybe that small voice in the back of his saying he can go on, he did not.
“I’ve known for a while. I just haven’t really made it official. I’m not sure why.”
Nevertheless, Martin Kampmann retires with a 20-7-0 record, accumulated over the course of the 12 years since he debuted back in 2003. Out of those fights, 17 were in the UFC, in which Kampann won 11 of them (making him officially 11-6-0 in UFC) against the likes of Carlos Condit, Thiago Alves, and Thales Leites. As for post-fight rewards, he has earned two Fight of the Nights, two Submissions of the Night, and one Knockout of the Night. Overall, Kampmann had a pretty decent MMA and UFC run. It probably won’t go down as one for the ages, as will be the case for Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor, but it was still a great run nevertheless.
It should be noted that, just because Martin Kampmann is retiring from MMA, he will not totally leave the sport which has been a major part of his life. Kampmann will still be involved in MMA in general.
“I’m sure I’ll still be involved in MMA. It will probably be more from a hobby perspective, whereas before, I was doing full-time fighting and full-time coaching. But I still have gyms that I work with and that I help. I coach, I do seminars, and I work a lot with my affiliate gyms and make sure that they’re getting better in their MMA development. So I’ll be involved in MMA, but now I’m really busy with other things.”
Those other things Martin Kampmann is catching up on are sleep and fishing, another passion of his he neglected for some time. He also will be working on his house and taking care of his wife and three children.
Unfortunately, Martin Kampmann is not retiring without any regrets. According to MMA Junkie, Kampmann does regret not having fought Georges St-Pierre for the UFC title.
“Georges St-Pierre was the champ for a long time in the welterweight division when I was competing and I was very close to getting a title shot a lot of times. Obviously, that was a fight I was always hoping to get and striving and working hard to get, but I never got the fight. I thought a couple times I was close. I was also close to getting a shot at middleweight. (St-Pierre) was the king of the division. He was beating all the best guys, obviously that was the fight I wanted to have.”
Ultimately, such a regret was not enough for Martin Kampmann to not retire. But with Georges St-Pierre semi-retired as well, chances of a fight between the two were quite slim. Ergo, Kampmann found it was probably the best time to hang the gloves.
[Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images]
