Gerald Meerschaert explains UFC retirement decision

LAS VEGAS – After sixty pro fights and nearly two decades, "GM3" is hanging them up.

Gerald Meerschaert announced his retirement Saturday after a loss to Julius Walker at UFC Fight Night 290 at Meta APEX. In an always emotional moment, Meerschaert laid his gloves down in the center of the cage for the final time. It was not an impulsive decision. It was calculated.

"I've been really thinking about it," Meerschaert told MMA Junkie and other reporters during a post-fight news conference. "It was mostly between me and my wife. I kept it pretty close to the chest. I didn't want any thoughts of that swaying or changing how I did anything with my team. I know we all knew it was going to be close to the last one if it wasn't the last one. I'm pretty much done. If the UFC came back and said, 'We'll give you one somewhere that you think is to your advantage and we want to do something special, I might think about it. But I've been fighting since 2007. I spent half my career in the UFC. I got 60 professional fights and a bunch more that aren't even on the books. I fought when head butts were legal. I'm getting too old for this stuff. This will probably be it for me."

It was Meerschaert's sixth loss in a row – four of the half-dozen appearances were finishes. However, the end of his career won't define him. For now, the UFC middleweight record books have one man atop the promotion's middleweight submission rankings. If you told Meerschaert this is how things would turn out, before his first fight in 2007, he wouldn't believe you.

"I never thought about it. Just to point to that, that's 60 fights where I just had to cut weight," Meerschaert said. "I'm not one of these heavyweights that just shows up and fights every week. It's a little bit different when you've got to shed the pounds and shed the water. I never thought about how many fights I had or what that certain number was. When you look at my career, I think in the first two or three years, I had almost 20 fights. I just came up in a time where you just fought, and that was what it was. Guys can say they're not concerned about their record but obviously if you look at mine I wasn't trying to protect my '0' ever. It was never really there to begin with. Yeah, just good old Midwest toughness, I guess."

Meerschaert, 38, isn't like many of his peers. Fighting was a lot to him – but not everything. He has a professional life waiting for him outside of fighting.

"I know exactly what I'm going to be doing after this and it has nothing to do with fighting," Meerschaert said. "Unlike most of my peers, I've got a pretty good head on my shoulders. I'm going to do some stuff more in the corporate setting and make my money that way. I'll get to work in air conditioning now and get to have all my clothes on. It's going to be a real big change of pace for me."

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Gerald Meerschaert explains UFC retirement decision