Former UFC lightweight Josh Thomson believes Tony Ferguson should seriously consider retirement.
Ferguson is coming off a third-round submission defeat to Bobby Green at UFC 291 last month. The setback made it six defeats in a row for “El Cucuy” dating back to 2020 with none of those fights being competitive.
Ferguson, however, claimed an intentional eye poke from Green changed the tide of the fight and despite calls from many for him to retire, the former interim champion has no plans whatsoever to do just that.
For Thomson, however, it's getting hard to watch Ferguson compete these days as he provided a warning to his former foe as far as his long-term health goes.
“You have to take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and go, ‘This is coming to an end real quick.’ It’s going to come sooner than you think,” Thomson said on his Weighing In podcast (via MMA Fighting). “And if not, if it doesn’t come to an end real quick, there’s a whole — and you’ll notice it within a couple years of you being retired. And I’m saying this directly to Tony, is that you’re going to notice things in your brain. You’re going to notice things in the way you talk to people. You’re going to notice things in the way you talk to your wife, the way you talk to your kids, the way you handle yourself. You need to have a reality check.
“I can’t even explain it. You have to understand how to reel it in, because you’re the only one in charge of your mentality and your body language, and the words that come out of your mouth that can affect your relationships with everyone. And I’ve had these conversations with myself a lot, because there’s times when words come out of your mouth and you don’t realize it. And so I get nervous for him, watching him take these Ls. I become a little emotional, it’s a little f****d up, but I care for the guy. I care for all these fighters.”
For many, Ferguson hasn't been the same since his beatdown at the hands of Justin Gaethje.
Thomson happened to be in the same situation, but against Ferguson when they fought back in 2015 in what was his last fight in the UFC. That's why he knows exactly what it's like for the 39-year-old.
“It’s 10 years off his life,” Thomson added. “Here’s the thing though, the Justin Gaethje fight and the Charles Oliveira fight, those two fights alone — and I speak from experience because it happened to me with [Ferguson] — at that age, the damage he took in that Gaethje fight, it changes you. It changes your body. It changes the way you think. … It’s not even so much [doing it] a couple times, it’s sometimes just one time.
“And at the age that he was at, I believe he was 36 or 37 at the time of the Gaethje fight, you’re not the same. And after the Tony fight, I was never the same. I never fought the same after that. I fought more conservative, I was always a step behind… It’s just, you’re not the same fighter.”
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