Luke Rockhold loses grappling match at Polaris 12

In the combat sports realm, Luke Rockhold has without a doubt had a tough couple of years, a loss at Polaris strengthens that.

After bring brutally knocked out in three out of his past four UFC bouts and more or less going into retirement, Rockhold decided to venture into competitive grappling. He faced Nick Rodriguez at a no-gi catchweight grappling bout, in which Rockhold was almost finished. An early clash of heads opened up a cut on Rockhold, who refused to et officials stop the bout.

“Someone get me some fucking vaseline,” Rockhold could be heard shouting.

At the end, Rodriguez won the bout via decision, leaving Rockhold without a combat sports win since September 2017. In that outing he defeated David Branch via TKO, despite a tough first round. After that he faced Yoel Romero for the interim middleweight world championship. In the third round Rockhold was viciously knocked out, cancelling plans of another title run. He then moved up to light heavyweight, taking on Poland’s Jan Blachowicz at UFC 239. Once more, ROckhold was brutally knocked out, this time in the second round.

Rockhold didn’t take the loss so seriously, and is unsure what the future brings as of now.

“Honestly, it’s just fun for me,” Rockhold told MMA Junkie. “Obviously, competition is a part of my life, and this kind of lightens it up, takes me away from all the political (expletive) that you deal with in the UFC. There’s a lot more to it. This is just fun, and it keeps that goal-orientated mindset.”

“We’ll go back, assess, and see what I want to do,” Rockhold said. “But (first) a little time off.”