Luke Rockhold’s difficult run in combat sports continued.
The previous UFC middleweight champion has enjoyed little success since winning gold on MMA’s biggest stage 11 years ago.
Since Rockhold lost in shocking fashion to Michael Bisping, the Californian has fallen short in all but two of his combat sports matches. And his eight defeats have come across a large number of combat sports.
Rockhold’s latest setback got here against Colby Covington on Saturday night in Florida, where the pair headlined Real American Freestyle’s fifth event.
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Is it time for Luke Rockhold to hold up his gloves? 😬
The previous UFC champion has lost eight of his last nine combat sports outings…
Luke Rockhold ‘blissful to assist’ after headlining early Real American Freestyle event
Since leaving the UFC after a loss to Paulo Costa in 2022, Rockhold’s knockout in Karate Combat over Joe Schilling is the one time he has had his hand raised.
His setbacks have largely been brutal, from his teeth-shattering loss to Mike Perry in bare-knuckle boxing to Rockhold’s devastating KO loss against Darren Till within the ring last August.
That consequence was fortunately not on the cards for the 41-year-old at RAF 5, but he was still unable to return to the win column after losing a lopsided match against Covington via tech fall.
Rockhold has since reacted to the lead to the comments section of an RAF post on Instagram, acknowledging his apparent motivation for competing under the brand new wrestling organization’s banner.
“Glad to assist the game,” Rockhold wrote.
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Colby Covington wouldn’t have joined the UFC if RAF was around
Covington returned to his roots on Saturday by emerging victorious from his Real American Freestyle debut.
Before transitioning to MMA and rising to grow to be interim UFC welterweight champion, ‘Chaos’ was a decorated collegiate wrestler, earning All-American honors at Oregon State University.
With that in mind, the two-time Pac-10 Conference champion is pleased to see RAF grow to be a legitimate platform for wrestlers to make a living. In truth, Covington would have skipped joining the UFC if it had happened 15 years earlier.
“I’m so thankful that they finally developed a league like this where wrestlers could make some funds to go on the market and do what they like to do,” Covington told Forbes.
“Because back after I was wrestling, in the event that they had Real American Freestyle, I’d have had no reason to go to the UFC. I’d have just followed the circuit on Real American Freestyle.
“But unfortunately, this wasn’t around at my time,” he continued. “The one way for me to essentially make good incentives and make financial future for myself was to go to the UFC.”
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