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Things have not been good lately for former UFC interim lightweight champion Tony Ferguson.
Ferguson, who once won 12 fights in a row in one of the promotion’s deepest divisions, just dropped his seventh fight in a row with unanimous decision loss to Paddy Pimblett at UFC 296.
Despite the please of MMA fans, the 39-year-old recently stated that he would not be retiring anytime soon.
Fellow UFC legend Matt Brown says that Ferguson shouldn’t necessarily retire, but he’ll never be the same after UFC 249 loss to Justin Gaethje.
“I feel like that fight [with Gaethje] or the [Michael] Chandler one, just took it out of him,” Brown said. “What a situation. It sucks. One of the biggest what-ifs. He tears his knee out trying to fight Khabib for the fourth time, tripping over a f****** wire. It’s just been downhill ever since. I feel like Gaethje took it out of him.
“The way he punched his face and just knocked his head around just scrambled some eggs in there. I can’t figure out, Tony looked like the normal Tony [at UFC 296]…he wasn’t looking slower. He’s always been an awkward, not really fast guy. So it makes me wonder maybe Paddy’s better than we give him credit for. I hate saying that, because I feel like that’s not the truth, but I have to wonder if he is, and if he is, is Tony still better than we think he is.”
To his credit, Brown did praise Ferguson’s work ethic as well.
“Tony’s putting in the work,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “He’s putting in the time. We see he’s grinding. When you’re doing David Goggins’ hell week, you put in the time, you put in the work. When you look at the resume of the people he’s lost to, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. These are killers.
“But now losing to Paddy, now it opens the question — maybe Paddy’s better than we think he is? Or is Tony on his last leg? It really didn’t answer a lot of questions for me. It didn’t answer the questions that I had at least. Are both these guys just better than we give them credit for? Maybe Tony still has some fights he can win. Maybe Paddy was just the better man tonight. It just didn’t answer all my questions.”
Ferguson’s career feels like a ticking time bomb. But nobody seems to have told him that.