Martin Kampmann officially announces retirement
After 27 professional MMA bouts, Martin Kampmann is stepping away from the cage for good.
"Hitman" hasn't actually fought since August 2013, a TKO-loss to Carlos Condit in a four-round barnburner that earned them a Fight of the Night bonus. That performance was typical of Kampmann's career, which rarely saw him have an easy night.
"It's a volatile game," Kampmann told Thomas Gerbasi of UFC.com. "You can have big upswings and also tough losses. But every fight, I always came to fight and I tried to finish the fights. I've never been one of the guys that just tried to squeak out a boring win. I went in there to fight. Sometimes that can bite you in the ass too, if you come in with a good game plan but then take a punch and you get too emotional and you want to fight. But I definitely had that desire inside to put on a fight, and I think that showed in my fights."
Finishing with a 20-7 record, Kampmann's resume reads like a who's who of the middleweight and welterweight division. The tough losses include Condit, Nate Marquardt, Johny Hendricks, Jake Shields, and Paul Daley, but he also has a decision win over Condit in their first meeting, as well as finishes of Thiago Alves and Jake Ellenberger.
In the two years since his last fight, Kampmann worked as a striking coach for Team Alpha Male in California while never fully committing to retirement. The birth of his third child convinced him to get off the fence and return to his homeland of Denmark, though the 33-year-old doesn't sound like he's going to be too far from the sport.
"I'm sure I'll still be involved in MMA," Kampmann said. "It will probably be more from a hobby perspective, whereas before, I was doing full-time fighting and full-time coaching. But I still have gyms that I work with and that I help. I coach, I do seminars, and I work a lot with my affiliate gyms and make sure that they're getting better in their MMA development.
"So I'll be involved in MMA, but now I'm really busy with other things."