Glover Teixeira walks back retirement comments ahead of UFC 275: “I don’t want to make a decision like that”

UFC light heavyweight champion Glover Teixeira doesn’t want to put a permanent end date on his career.

The champion is set to face Jiri Prochazka at UFC 275 next month. Ahead of his first title defense, Teixeira stated that he was likely going to retire this year. His ideal year would be a win at UFC 275, then a title defense in Madison Square Garden in November.

At the age of 42, talk of retirement is far from new for Teixeira. However, he’s since decided to walk back his previous comments. On The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, the UFC light heavyweight champion clarified his retirement talk.

There, Glover Teixeira clarified that in an ideal world, his aforementioned retirement plan would happen. However, he also acknowledged that he doesn’t want to make that decision on hanging up the gloves right now. He also pointed to Henry Cejudo’s brief retirement as a reason to not be so rash when retiring.

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“Eventually, I do want to retire. I said the perfect scenario is me beating this guy in Singapore and hopefully fight Jan [Blachowicz] at Madison Square Garden in November and then call it a day. But I don’t want to make a decision like that. I think that’s a possibility, but I don’t want to [say], ‘Oh I’m going to retire this year, or a couple more fights,’ or this and that.” (h/t MMAFighting)

Glover Teixeira continued, “I don’t want to make a call and be desperate later. I even mentioned Henry Cejudo. Nothing against the guy, I love the kid, but you see him retired [and] he knows he wants to come back. He knows he has more. I don’t want to make this decision like that, but it would be a possibility, yeah.”

What do you think about Glover Teixeira’s comments about retirement?