The 36-year-old Swick announced his retirement from mixed martial arts as an active fighter on Thursday (July 16), less than a week after his UFC 189 loss to Alex Garcia on July 11, and while the official announcement is fairly fresh, the Houston native is at peace with it.
“Going into the fight, this was the healthiest I’ve been in eight years,” Swick said. “I got my health back, my injuries were gone, and I actually felt really, really good for this fight. And there’s no excuse why I didn’t put it together better.
“But it’s funny, because after the fight I talked with (AKA teammate) Luke (Rockhold), and Luke wanted to see me continue fighting, but he made one statement that was as true as anything I’ve ever heard, and I’ve lived by it as well,” he continues.
“He was talking about someone else at the time, and he said ‘you can’t have one foot out the door. You have to be all in or all out.’ And I’ve preached that to my guys at AKA Thailand for the longest time.
"You have to be 100 per cent committed to a point where it’s absurd. You have to miss funerals, you have to not be there for your family, you have to do the things that make you selfish to have success in this career, because that dedication is what it takes to make it to the top or to have any kind of success in this sport.
"So I’m at the stage where I’m kind of half out the door.”
It’s rare to see any fighter leave on such a note, especially when he can still compete at the elite level, but it doesn’t surprise anyone who knows Swick, and my memories of the Ultimate Fighter season one cast member will always be of a post-fight scene in Florida back in 2006.
The event at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida was over, the post-fight press conference was wrapping up, and UFC staff were making the walk through the casino to vans waiting in the parking lot.
It was a three-minute walk tops, and as I walked and talked with Swick, that journey turned into a 20-minute one, as he stopped for every fan who wanted an autograph or picture. If this was the smart phone era, it might have taken even longer for every selfie-seeking admirer to get time with the then-middleweight contender.
But he didn’t complain, he didn’t turn anyone away. These were his people, and he was happy to do it.
For newer followers of the sport, it’s hard to describe what fighters like Swick, Forrest Griffin, Kenny Florian, Stephan Bonnar and the rest of the original Ultimate Fighter cast meant to the sport and its fans. The fighters that were the superstars of the game at the time – Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, BJ Penn – they were like stars in other sports: almost unreachable idols who you knew just from watching them compete.
Yet through reality television, we got to know Mike Swick, his struggles, his journey, his goals. And to paraphrase UFC President Dana White, we got it, and we liked it.
In combat sports, few get to leave on their own terms. You take a bad knockout or a string of losses and you’re basically pushed out the door. That isn’t the case with Swick. He fought the good fight every night, he’s got a wife and two daughters waiting for him at home, and he has a career beyond competing, though he will stay in the game through his gym and the fighters he coaches.
“I can help develop fighters and launch fighters’ careers and have a gym that fighters come to for training,” he said. “I think on a larger scale, that’s the biggest thing I’ll be a part of. And I get to have this for the rest of my life. I get to enjoy their success and live vicariously through all these guys. That makes it (retiring) a lot easier.”
It’s the perfect way to go out, and all I can remember from my first interview with the fighter formerly known as “Kid Lion,” was that he told me at the start, “This is gonna be a long story.”
It has been, but a one with a happy ending as well.
“It’s been a crazy journey. It’s 11 years (since my UFC debut), and it’s been incredible,” Swick said. “It’s been the best thing that ever happened to me, it changed my life and now I have something outside of fighting for the rest of my life.”
So how would he like to be remembered by his fans?
“I want my fans to remember me as the guy that went out there and fought and just went for it,” Swick said. “I always went for the knockout, always went for the finish, and I always went there to make the fans excited. That made me happy and that’s what I lived for. It’s entertainment and I went in there to be an entertaining fighter. That was everything to me.”
Story courtesy of UFC.com