NEW YORK – It’s reasonable to say outside a few natural evolvements the past nearly 15 years, Stephen Thompson is pretty much the same guy now as when he made his UFC debut.
On the UFC 143 Super Bowl Saturday card in 2012, Thompson made his promotional debut in Las Vegas. His fight was the curtain jerker, and maybe a couple thousand people, at most, saw his bonus-winning head kick KO of Dan Stittgen in person.
It’s hard to imagine the soft-spoken Thompson acting much different this week than he did then, though these days it’s under much different circumstances. The win over Stittgen was followed with a loss to Matt Brown, but then Thompson went on a tear with wins over future middleweight champ Robert Whittaker, former welterweight champ Johny
Hendricks and former title challenger Rory MacDonald to get his own welterweight title shots.
After his loss to Brown, “Wonderboy” didn’t lose again for nearly five years. But that title fight setback to Tyron Woodley, after a draw in their first championship bout, started a run of just 4 wins in hist past 12 fights. With losses in five of his past six, and no wins in nearly four years, Thompson remains confident his announced final fight will be the one to turn things around so he can walk away a winner.
And he’s truly taking it all in. Thompson (17-9-1 MMA, 12-9-1 UFC) closes the prelims in his retirement fight against Charles Radtke (12-5 MMA, 5-2 UFC) at UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
“This week, this has been probably the only time – and I wish I did this every time I came to a fight – was soak all of it up,” Thompson said at Wednesday’s UFC 334 media day. “I’ve really focused on bringing it all in and knowing that this is my last one. I’ve got Pops over there taking pictures of every moment so we can have those memories logged. But yeah – it's so surreal. I know the questions are about the last fight, but I'm really focused on this fight Saturday. My goal is to end my career with a ‘dub’ and have my hand raised. I haven't really focused on what I'm going to say or anything like that. I’m just going to wing it, I guess.”
Thompson is a slight betting favorite against Radtke, and it’ll be the first time he hasn’t been an underdog in nearly five years. He was a 2-1 favorite against Belal Muhammad, but lost a decision and Muhammad went on to win the welterweight title.
By making it known his fight with Radtke will be his last, he opened the door to the kind of distracting questions and interviews that could take his focus away from the task at hand. But Thompson, who will turn 44 in February, said that call left him without regrets.
“I wanted to get it out there,” he said. I wanted people to know so I'm not surprising them on fight night. At least they can get their questions out now and not afterwards. I'm glad I did. No regrets, for sure.”
And when it comes to his career as a whole, even though he never won a UFC title, he put himself on the precipice and left a mark on the MMA space. Never one to engage in the kind of trash talk exhibited by many of his contemporaries, “Wonderboy” is happy to walk away the same nice guy as when he started.
“No regrets at all. I've won some, had some really good fights, I had some I lost, and there's always that ‘should have, would have, could have’ thought in your head. I don't tend to dwell on that,” Thompson said of his career. “It happened. You can't go back and change it. There's no regrets. These guys that beat me, they beat me at my best. I gave it my all, so they deserve it.
“I want to leave this sport knowing that you can still be at the top of the game and still be the good guy. Sometimes that's a breath of fresh air. You don't have to be the guy to talk trash all the time. You can be the ‘NMF’ (Nice Motherf*cker).”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Stephen Thompson brings no regrets to UFC 334 retirement fight
