With UFC lightweight and sometime welterweight Kevin Lee freshly retired from competition, he took to Submission Radio to discuss his reasons. Unsurprisingly for fans who have paid attention to Lee’s recent fights, he revealed that his knees have been giving him trouble ever since he lost to Charles Oliveira.
“My knees have just been giving me hell for three years now. The hardest thing before this was weight-cutting, right? Me going up to 170 kind of alleviated that but I’ve never had to deal with this type of injury before.
Should Kevin Lee Have Retired Earlier?
I don’t move the same. I’m not moving at the same speed as I was before. I had to take it easy the whole camp then try to turn it on during the fight and honestly, I just wasn’t ready for that speed. My body is just not — my knees are not prepared. I’ve got a torn ACL. I’ve had it since that Diego Sanchez fight.
I decided not to get the surgery after the Diego Sanchez fight and just strengthen it and fight on it. But it’s pretty obvious and clear that I need to have surgery on it.”
Lee’s movement and agility seemed to desert him in his most recent appearances. Although he looked like a serious contender until three years ago, recent fights saw Lee stiff and immobile. Lee now feels like he should have called it quits three years ago.
“If I’m really being honest, it’s something I’ve been thinking about since I fought Charles Oliveira. Even Firas Zahabi will tell you, sometimes when you get done with a fight and you walk into the back, sometimes you have moments like, ‘What the f*** did I just do? What’re we doing? This is crazy, right?’
After that fight, I had a different type of feeling to it and part of me wants to post the post-fight interview that I did for that fight where I kind of told them I wanted to take a few years off, and honestly, I probably should have retired right then and there.
But it was just that this is what I’d been doing for so long, this is where I put all of my heart and soul into that I just kind of double downed and made sure that this is what I was gonna do.”
Kevin Lee finished his UFC run with a disastrous 3-5 record, and will now explore other avenues. He was a landmark signing for former lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov’s Eagle FC, where he defeated Diego Sanchez in what was to be his penultimate career fight.
