Henry Cejudo believes he would’ve been the greatest if he retired like Jon Jones and Khabib Nurmagomedov

Henry Cejudo thinks his career could have been looked at in the same light as Jon Jones and Khabib Nurmagomedov if ‘Triple C’ had chosen to retire from MMA in a more calculated fashion. With Cejudo recently retiring from the sport once again, he lost at UFC 323 to young upstart Payton Talbott which extended the Olympic gold medalist’s losing skid to four straight defeats.

Reflecting on his second and potentially final MMA retirmenet effort, during an interview with Bloody Elbow, with an excerpt of the chat posted to X account @RedCorner_MMA, Cejudo said,

“If I could leave like Khabib [Nurmagomedov] or Jon Jones, could you imagine that? Then it’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s the greatest combat [sports] athlete of all time.’ But because of these losses, it was like, ‘Oh, he’s one of them.’ But if you really think back and look at the resume and what I’ve done. Becoming the youngest in history, foregoing college, doing s**t that people can only dream of, man.”

Henry Cejudo’s maps out curious new career move

Henry Cejudo doesn’t seem to be wasting any time since hanging up the gloves but his next career-minded move is something that is coming out of left field a bit. The former two-division UFC champion mapped this out while on the ground at IBA Mens Elite World Championships in Dubai, as Cejudo stated [via Bloody Elbow],

“I’m starting a children’s book and I want to help out a bunch of legends. I have a rolodex full of legends that I want to help to start teaching them, like, business. I want to tell real stories, because I have kids and I know the importance of inspiring kids while telling stories that are the truth. Little Henry was a small kid, bring the whole height into the conversation.”

“What I want to do is bring a load of different athletes to be able to tell their story so they become the author and they’re able to tell a real story. Kids are going to be reading real s**t, not just ‘little Timmy fell and got a boo boo’. This is going to be some hard stuff that hopefully can inspire a lot of kids.”