Felice Herrig explains why she ended retirement to sign with BKFC, reveals they “tripled my UFC contract”

Felice Herrig ended her retirement rather quickly.

After Herrig suffered a submission loss to Karolina Kowalkiewicz in June she announced her retirement from MMA. Yet, she recently signed with BKFC, and according to Herrig, she retired from MMA, not from fighting.

“I announced my retirement from MMA. It was like, I’m retiring from MMA, I’m done. But, I started out as a kickboxer and boxer and that is all I ever wanted to do,” Herrig said on Just Scrap Radio on BJPENN.com. “It is just that when I got into MMA, I got into MMA there were no opportunities for women as a boxer or a kickboxer so I transitioned into MMA. Over the years, I did my thing in MMA and got good in grappling but I never loved it. Even before my knee surgeries, I was always in the top 10 in the UFC so it’s not like I was bad, but I just always loved boxing.

“After the two knee surgeries, grappling is so hard on the body. I had to drive an hour to the gym, that’s just for MMA and I have to do jiu-jitsu that’s another 45 minutes away and my boxing was only 25 minutes away,” Herrig continued. “For me, I have openly talked about having anxiety and I feel like having so much to deal with when I don’t want to deal with it anymore, what’s the point. So, I think people were under the impression that I retired completely and I didn’t want to fight anymore, which was never the case for me. I still wanted to do boxing.”

When she told her manager she still wanted to fight, Herrig was approached by BKFC to see if she was interested in signing with them. Once the promotion made her an offer, which includes getting her UFC contract tripled and allowing her to take boxing fights, the UFC veteran quickly signed with BKFC.

“I have the opportunity to fight for Triller as well and do straight-up boxing, Bare Knuckle is where the opportunity is and the organization has grown over the past year,” Herrig said. “I’m really excited not just for me but for all strikers because a lot of strikers got into MMA for the same reason so they could have an opportunity to fight. To be honest with you, they also tripled my UFC contract so you can’t really go wrong. It’s very hard to say no.”

Along with getting more money and being allowed to box, Felice Herrig also says she will be competing at 125lbs which is something she has wanted to do for quite some time. She thinks the weight cuts have played a role in her past couple of fights, but due to wrestling and grappling in MMA, she continued to fight at 115 so she wasn’t overwhelmed at 125.

“I will also be fighting at 125. I realized this in my last fight, I’m getting older and your body changes and I don’t want to cut weight anymore and it’s not good for your body. I’ve been doing it for 20 years and have done it 60-plus times,” Herrig said.

With Felice Herrig signing a multi-fight deal with BKFC, she will become another big name for the 125lbs division that features the likes of Bec Rawlings, Paige VanZant, and Rachael Ostovich, among others. Yet for Herrig, she says she just wants to get her feet wet in BKFC before fighting the bigger names and more experienced fighters.

The goal for Herrig is to make her debut in December against whoever and show how good of a striker she is.

“I’d like to just get my feet wet first. I don’t want to put pressure on myself and everyone wants you to shit talk and call someone out, but I don’t care about that. Once I get into it, maybe I will have the desire to fight some people but I’m doing this for me,” Herrig said. “I just want to go have fun and fight, it’s like whoever… I’m looking to make my debut around December.”

Who would you like to see Felice Herrig fight in her BKFC debut?