Rich Franklin Considers Himself “The Last Of The Mohicans”

“I still train. I train basically daily still. I don’t let myself fall out of shape from my reputation and the kind of work ethic I had. That stuff just doesn’t go away, so I’m constantly doing the things I need to do. There are days where I wake up and I’m very hungry to fight, but I have a job here and I just spent three and a half weeks out of the country. Juggling things is going to become ever so difficult for me. So, if it’s something that I am going to do, I really need to make that decision. I’m coming up on two years out of the cage inactive. You just made a comment to Michael Chandler about three years out of the cage and the ring rust and all that kind of stuff. Don’t think that these factors that I think about, that they’re not in the back of my head somewhere. But in theory, I would love to take my last fight.”

“I don’t look back and I don’t have regrets or anything or unfinished business. I’ve never felt like the kind of person that needed to avenge a loss because I can avenge a loss if I want to, but it never erases that loss anyway, so it’s still there. I’m satisfied with the things that I’ve accomplished in my career. If I were never able to fight again, I would be OK.

“I’m fortunate in the sense that, mentally, I’m capable of moving on to a phase in my life and not hanging on to something when I’m physically not capable of hanging on. I believe my body is physically good enough to run another fight camp if not a couple more fight camps if I wanted to, but I am at that point where it’s like, ‘eh’. If I do one more fight, that definitely will be my last fight. I would not be the kind of fighter that would announce retirement and then decide a year later to come out of retirement.”

“Honestly, I think of just some sort of epic battle. I look at my fight against Wanderlei [Silva], for example, both of them. They were great fights, very entertaining. The kind of fight that had you on the edge of your seat. That’s what I would look for, some sort of match up like that. Something that the fans would want to see and I would want to go out in style, so to speak.”