Ricardo Lamas in dilemma over retirement
Veteran featherweight Ricardo Lamas isn't sure whether his fight against Bill Algeo at UFC Vegas 8 indeed was the final scrap of his professional fighting career.After earning a well-deserved unanimous decision win over Algeo on Saturday, Ricardo Lamas, in conversation with commentator Paul Felder during the post-fight interview, revealed that he is seriously contemplating retirement.
“I’ve been kind of wrestling with the idea of hanging the gloves up. That’s something I want to talk to my family about first before making a decision.”
"We'll see what happens next" - Ricardo Lamas
However, even though Lamas is currently feeling strongly about hanging his gloves due to his struggles inside the cage in the past couple of years, he admitted that it's difficult to say anything for sure right now.
“Obviously, over this last year I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. My last fight I suffered my worst injury that I had to date, fracturing my jaw in two places. I had to have surgery. Just a lot of ups and downs in the last kind of year or two with my career, and I think that can be attributed to me kind of wrestling with the idea of hanging up the gloves. I don’t know, I’m thinking like this now and I could wake up tomorrow and want to call Sean Shelby on the phone and see what he’s got next for me. We’ll see what happens.”
The win last weekend brought a huge sigh of relief to Lamas, who entered Saturday’s fight with three losses in his past four bouts. The last time Ricardo Lamas was seen competing before Saturday was way back in June 2019 against Calvin Kattar at UFC 238 where the latter knocked him out in the very first round.
Speaking about his legacy in the sport, Ricardo Lamas said that he wants to be remembered as someone who "always gave it their all" and never disrespected people.
“That I always left it in the cage,” Lamas said. “Just like in this fight, it was a back-and-forth fight. But just never stopping, and kind of as fights progress on, I just get meaner and the dog comes out of me a little more. I want to be remembered for someone that always gave it their all. I never went in there and bullsh*tted, I never went in there and disrespected people. I just went in to perform.”