The way he said goodbye, it was like he pushing away from the table at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“I’m done,” Stipe Miocic said in his post-fight interview after suffering a third-round knockout loss to UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones at UFC 309. “I’m hanging them up. I’m retiring. Thank God.”
So ended a nearly 15-year career in MMA. After 25 fights, nine UFC heavyweight title fights, and a historic championship reign, Miocic walked out of Madison Square Garden like a man who was very much looking forward to never again speaking into a microphone as part of his job.
There was a lot of talk headed into this fight about Jones’ legacy. But what about Miocic’s?
The commentary during and after the fight, as well as the standard sales-oriented hype before it, repeatedly told us he was the most accomplished heavyweight champ in UFC history. That’s true by the numbers. Miocic’s record of three consecutive title defenses broke the previous mark, which was an underwhelming two in a row. He held the heavyweight strap for the better part of four years, with a brief interruption after losing it to Daniel Cormier before ultimately getting his vengeance twice in the trilogy.
He was also, let’s just say it, not always the best nor even the most interested advocate for himself. Miocic never liked doing interviews. For this fight, he did as little media as the UFC would allow. Jones is clearly very concerned with not only being the best but being recognized as such, publicly and often. Even as champion, Miocic always seemed like he’d be content with only his friends and family knowing it. What the rest of us thought, he didn’t seem to care.
If your goal is to get what you can out of this sport without letting it consume you or break you or drive you insane, that’s probably the way to do it. Somehow Miocic managed to be the heavyweight champion of the world without letting it become his entire identity. That’s extremely rare. It also gives us a reason to think he meant it when he said he was done, just like he meant it when he added “thank God” at the end.
Miocic sometimes seemed like he was doing everything he could to trick us into thinking that he didn’t have a personality. We saw glimpses of it in some of the pre-fight shows, occasionally even on social media. When he was with his family or his team or his buddies at the firehouse, a little bit of the man himself sometimes managed to shine through. His life in the UFC he held at a sort of remove. It was like he knew it was temporary, subject to suddenly shifting winds of public perception or a promoter’s whims, so he wouldn’t let himself get too attached to it.
Again, psychologically that’s probably the healthiest way to do any of this. But without Miocic beating the drum for himself, it’s hard not to wonder if anyone else will do it for him once he’s all the way gone from MMA.
The UFC had an incentive to shine that light on him when he was headlining pay-per-views. He might not have always enjoyed it, but his standing and reputation benefitted from it. But like all fight promoters, the UFC is in the business of selling what’s next. There’s not much profit in history here.
Obviously, Miocic deserves to be remembered among the greats. He fought almost all the best heavyweights of his era. (Cain Velasquez was one who got away, as did Brock Lesnar, but Miocic’s title reign eclipsed both.) He was the only UFC heavyweight to really beat Francis Ngannou. (I maintain for the record that no one won the fight between Ngannou and Derrick Lewis.) In fact, the only people with wins over Miocic but zero losses to him are Jones and Stefan Struve. (The latter went 4-8 after that win, thus keeping him mostly out of Miocic’s orbit.)
If the facts set down in the permanent record mean anything, they will stand as a testament to Miocic’s greatness as a fighter. But anybody who’s followed this sport for any length of time knows that facts sometimes have a limited shelf life in MMA. Without an active attempt to remember, they can get buried, like bulldozing a historic building to put up a Starbucks.
Miocic might not care whether or not we remember his accomplishments. He knows what he did. He has the hardware at home to prove it. But when the hype machine pivots and moves on, we should at least try to remember for ourselves the way it really was. It’s literally the least we can do.