Knee injuries have kept former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans away from the UFC octagon for over a year and half.
The last time we saw Evans he had won his second fight in a row, finishing Chael Sonnen in a single round, and he is more than eager to return to the cage and extend that winning streak.
“I just want to get back in there,” Evans said on Inside MMA last week. “Just being away from the sport like how I have been, it’s been the hardest [thing] that I’ve ever had to go through.”
While the drive to return to the cage and climb back up the UFC ranks is still there for Rashad Evans, he’s certainly aware of the narrative that it may be time for him to hang it up since he’s 35 years old, but that’s not an idea that he’s taken seriously at this point.
“I am 35, and everybody’s like ‘man you’re 35’. They talk about how old I am and stuff like that,” Evans said. “For me, yeah I’m 35, but my body still feels good. Despite my knee injury, this is the first surgery I’ve ever had. I’m not willing to stop yet, and I’m not willing to stop because I still have that desire to want to compete.”
As far as looking towards the future and determining when it might be the right time to hang up the gloves? Rashad has an idea of the timeframe.
“3, 5 more years. I think it’s more about ‘am I still having fun?’,” Evans said. “As long as I’m still having fun, as long as I’m enjoying what I’m doing, wake up with the desire to train because if you don’t don’t have that desire to train, nothing else matters. You can’t get out of bed for a paycheck because at the end of the day, your fight is going to show that.”
“You have to have the desire to do extra, not just doing what everybody else is doing, but you have to want to do extra. You [have to] want to more because you want to be champion, and I still have that. The minute I wake up not having that feeling, that’s when I need to quit.”
That being said, Evans is focused on the present, and in the present, he foresees a championship, even if that means fighting friend and colleague Daniel Cormier.
“I do feel I have one more title run in me,” Evans said. “Even though [the light heavyweight division] is very stacked, I see there’s some holes in it. I see that these guys, they’re very beatable.”
“I would love to fight DC, I feel bad because that’s my boy. We work together, he’s a friend of mine, but we’re in the same weight class. He’s definitely somebody I have a lot of respect for,” Evans said. “As long as I’m healthy enough to go out there, I’d go out and fight anybody. That’s just for me having two years of frustration just doing but sitting on the bench watching everybody else fight.”
While Evans wouldn’t be opposed to a fight with Daniel Cormier, he has a real desire for a rematch with Jon Jones before he calls it a career.
“I would love to fight Jon Jones again,” Evans said. “I have tremendous respect for Jon Jones as a fighter. I think he’s one of the best ever to fight. I would love to be able to go out like GSP as a champion, just get the belt and walk and be done right into the sunset.”