Former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin says he’d come back for the right fight
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a long list of MMA legends return to the cage with varying results. We’ve seen comebacks from Tito Ortiz, Fedor Emelianenko, Wanderlei Silva, Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock, and of course, our own BJ Penn. We’ve also heard legends like Chuck Liddell and Matt Hughes hint at comebacks. On a recent episode of MMAJunkie Radio, former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin and current One Championship Vice President Rich Franklin weighed in on the possibility of his own return to the cage.
While Franklin acknowledged such a thing is possible, he assured it would take a special kind of fight to get him excited enough to make a comeback.
“People ask me if I miss my career, and the main thing I miss is not necessarily walking into the arena and all that and having your hand raised, but I miss the brotherhood I had prepping for a fight,” Franklin explained.
“Is it possible I could come back? I mean, anything’s possible,” he said. “But is it probable? Not likely. I’ve never really been interested in a legends league. Just because once you climb to the top of Everest, you wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, I just you want to climb up Everest and go to base camp.’ It just doesn’t work that way.
“But the right kind of matchup and fight could definitely pique my interest. It’s just not probable, so I don’t really want to give anybody any false hope as if I’m coming back.”
“To look at me, I’m probably actually in better shape with my body feeling the way it feels than I was in my fight career,” he added. “Now, obviously, I’m not in peak physical condition, because you just kind of maintain that kind of conditioning throughout your life. You have to pick and choose when to peak, but yeah, I keep myself in shape.”
Would you be interested in seeing Rich Franklin return to the cage for one last fight?
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/3/2017.
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Rich Franklin
