Rich Franklin Interview: Talks About One More UFC Fight
Read and listen to our exclusive interview!
Peter Morrison/AP/Press Association ImagesRich Franklin is one of the biggest names in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. He fought Ken Shamrock on the The Ultimate Fighter 1 finale, and was involved in numerous legendary battles against the likes of Chuck Liddell, Dan Henderson and Anderson Silva. Recently, my colleague, Ratish Menon and I had the pleasure of talking to the former UFC Middleweight champion of the world, and the current VP of ONE FC. During the course of the interview, we asked Rich numerous questions regarding his personal life, his MMA career and his current status as a fighter. Heres an excerpt from the interview. AG: With your recent move to ONE FC in a business capacity, would you be interested in doing the remaining fight on your UFC contract? Rich: When I signed with ONE FC, UFC told me that I didnt have to retire from my fight contract, which is good. I then had the chance to sit down with ONE FC and talk to them about me fighting, and how that would work. I asked them what would happen if I took another fight, and if the organization would want that or not. Im 40 years old now; Im not young anymore. People tell me, Randy (Couture) fought till he was 48, so you still have 5 6 good years left. But those things are rare, so yeah, I think about retiring, but whos going to pay my bills in ten years? I know fighting is not my job with ONE FC, but these are the things I need to figure out because its been a long time since Ive been out of the cage at this point, and Im coming on that time frame where it has been so long; if Im not going to take that fight soon, then I seriously need to consider retiring. RM: You recently expressed your interest to fight Anderson Silva for the third time. Would you want that to be your final fight?Rich: That stuff has been taken out of context. I had discussed this in an interview, and somebody said, Do you think you can beat Anderson Silva if you fight him now? In order to achieve something like that, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe that you are a winner, not just with fighting but in life in general. You have to train your mind in such a way that no matter whatever obstacle you put in front of me, I will find a way to get through it. To answer your question, do I think that I can beat Anderson Silva if we fought for the third time? Absolutely, yes! But that was the answer given the context of the conversation. AG: Talking about the veterans of the sport and the fighters getting up there in age, what did you think of Chael Sonnen calling you out recently and the taunts thrown your way?Rich: I know that he posted some stuff on social media and this was involving Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva, both of whom were caught using performance-enhancing drugs. It all came down to Wanderlei not confirming to fight, because of which Chael suddenly needed an opponent and started calling me out. With that fight being at the top of the card, it was natural for him to call someone like me out. I didnt take it personally and I dont think that fight would have materialized, but it speaks volumes of my standing in the sport. However, I have opened a café up in the west coast in the Los Angeles area of the United States and have been working on it for over a year and half. For me to leave all that and take a fight at such a short notice wouldnt have been possible. RM: Did you get a chuckle out of the tweets after you read them?Rich: I did, actually. He had tweeted several of them and my friends and people like that, took offense to the same and I was like, Look, hes got to fight somebody and if I were him, I too would be figuring out something similar and he just needed an opponent. AG: Were you surprised with the way things played out with him and would you like to comment on the entire situation that led up to his retirement from fighting? Rich: Yes, the way that things played out with those 3 guys testing positive for performance enhancing drugs; you know my reaction to the whole thing was, to describe it in one word - Wow. That is the kind of stuff that happens only in movies. But I think that Chael did the right thing by retiring after that. I dont know how old Chael is right now. I know he is in his upper 30s, maybe nearing 40s, but its difficult at this age to keep up. The difficulty is that, when I was 20 years old, I could go into the gym and train, train really really hard and if my buddy would call me to help him move his couch, I would go help him move his couch and whatever; do that and go back into the gym and train a second time. Now, I can go and train in the gym like I am 20 years old, which I do but after that workout I have to go home and sleep. I am not running errands or helping friends or any of that kind of stuff. Now the body needs more time to recover at this age and that is a scientific fact, and thats something all the fighters are experiencing, including myself. That makes me wonder how many fighters are there in the UFC, or MMA in general, are doing this when you have some fighters who are abiding by the rules and others that are not and these are the issues you have to deal with in the fight game. I have fought Wanderlei before, and was this the kind of stuff that was going on when I fought him? These are the kinds of things that you start thinking about. RM: After your last fight with Cung Le, you seemed pretty disappointed and had said that you needed to go back and chalk out a different game plan going forward. Did that defeat prompt you to look out for other opportunities outside of fighting? Rich: Definitely a loss would do that, especially at this point in my career, because after my win over Wanderlei, a win over Cung would have possibly put me in title contention if not much more than talks for it. The loss to Cung completely derailed me and because the camp for that fight went really well, I never really crossed that bridge into thinking whether what would happen if I lost this fight because I fully expected to win that fight. Prior to that fight, I knew that I am in a stage of my career where my time is limited and I have to really start thinking of what I am going to do to pay my bills; such thoughts are already creeping into your head. Considering that for the last 5 years, people have been asking me if I had thought about retirement, but that loss was the final nail in the coffin as they would say because it really made me think that I need to figure something out because I had one more fight left and if I took that fight, that definitely would be my retirement fight, so what am I going to do? AG: You mentioned about your last fight. Now, would that be your last fight in the UFC or of your career?Rich: If I do take the last fight on my contract with the UFC, it would surely be the last fight of my MMA career. During the course of 45 minutes, we talked to Rich about ONE FC, his personal life, his new ventures outside of MMA and much more. You can listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview.