Google News
A little over two weeks have passed since Luke Rockhold's last match. The former UFC and Strikeforce champion retired after losing to Paul Costa at the UFC 278 event and has a very good career behind him. True, Rockhold probably could have had an even bigger career, but 16 wins in 22 pro appearances, the aforementioned Strikeforce and UFC titles, and wins over fighters like Michael Bisping, Chris Weidman, Lyoto Machida, Jacare Souza, and Tim Kennedy certainly make it his resume impressive.
Rockhold retired after his third loss in a row, but in his match against Paulo Costa, he gave a hearty performance that won him a bunch of new fans. Rockhold proved that his beard is not "glass" after all and that he is very combative in difficult situations.
Rockhold touched on three of his favorite moments in his career
“Those moments that define you as a man, I think those are the biggest moments — and there’s three that really stick out,” Rockhold said.
“For me, it’s my fight with [Ronaldo] ‘Jacare’ [Souza]. It made me whole. It made me a man. That gave me relevance in life. And then the stages of the game, there are always goals within goals, and then there was the fight with [Chris] Weidman.
Doing that and achieving that height, you know? “And then coming back and doing this [against Costa], proving it to myself that — where I needed to go after losing track of myself, letting society kind of direct what I should want, what I thought I want, and then having to come back down to reality and figure out what the f*** I want really.
... I had to lose myself to come back, and now we’re going to f****** show people, show people the truth. That’s how I saw it”. He played the match against "Jacare" in the ninth month of 2011. It was the ninth match of Rockhold's career, and at the tender age of 27, he became the Strikeforce middleweight champion.
He won by unanimous decision after five tough rounds against the legendary Brazilian, and it was Rockhold's first match that came out of the first round. He defeated Weidman at the end of 2015, by TKO in the fourth round. It was probably the peak of Rockhold's career as he became the UFC middleweight champion, and then followed a sharp decline with four losses in the next five appearances.
