Emmanuel Rodriguez retires

Absolute shame, one of the best technicians today but can also tell his heart wasn't in it. Best of wishes in his retirement.

 

Weird timing to leave the sport. He looked like he was about to take over the BW division again with Inoue moving up. Wish nothing but the best for him if he really does retire.

 

Weird. Plenty fights out there for him. Jason Moloneys older than him...

Retire with his health atleast... (I hope)

 

Odd news, but they say you can never retire too early from boxing. Best of luck to him.

 

Probably healthy issues. Manny was underrated.

 

Isn't this the third or so inexplicably early retirement of a reaonably close to prime contender in the last year or so?

 

Who else retired?

 

Teófimo López, Joshua Franco, some British guy...

Lejarraga, Murata, Rosado, Kiko M. (the latter two were by no means spring chickens and have been around forever but they were recently in high profile fights and still aren't really "old")

Hrgović was rumored to have, before he fought McKean.

Danny Roman. Rivas. Rosario.

 

This is...odd. But best of luck to him, and thanks for winning another title again and making yet another Inoue win age well.

 

Wasn't he on the receiving end of some bad headbutts against Russell? Maybe some type of TBI or brain bleed? (Only speculation on my part)

 

Think so, yeah. Some of the recent ones do make sense when you look into casual factors. Rivas with chronic inhruies etc. So you might be onto something with this one.

It just seems to be a lot of retirement news from guys that aren't retirement age lately.

 

I forgot Franco retired.

 

Seems like there have been a lot of young guys retiring this year, hadn't really thought about it til you pointed it out. Hopefully we'll look back on this year as an aberration and not a sign of the new normal. I found today's news especially odd, since he just won that belt and didn't seem to be considering retirement at that point. If he truly has decided to hang em up, it's not a bad performance to go out on at least. Dominated every round and capped it off by putting the other guy down three times in the last one, there's definitely worse notes to end on.

On the note of Lopez though, I think he's still active. I remember he was adamant that he was retired and for awhile it looked like he had actually vacated, but then the WBO gave him a deadline to say if he was really retired, and he sent in papers saying he wanted to keep his belt. Whether it was just grandstanding or he changed his mind, it seems like he's gonna be fighting on at least.