Niko Price had already let go of fighting. When Sean Shelby reached out to offer him a proper send-off, the welterweight veteran was home, working alongside his brother and thinking about a business that had nothing to do with getting punched for a living.
Price laid it out in comments Ariel Helwani posted on X on Wednesday. “I checked out. I was chilling,” he said, adding that he was “already looking towards building a different business and other things.” His last bout had been the final one on his UFC contract, and he’d decided he wasn’t going to chase the promotion for another. “I wasn’t gonna go begging or asking,” Price said. He figured the run was over and he was at peace with it. “I’m happy with what I did. I made history.”
Then the matchmaker called. Price said Shelby asked him if he wanted to fight, and he didn’t need long to answer: “Of course. Of course I’ll take a proper retirement fight. Why not?”
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That fight happened Saturday, Oct. 10, at UFC Vegas 122 at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, and it went about as well as a farewell can. Price came in on a four-fight losing streak, the bout was billed as the last of his career, and he stopped Leon Shahbazyan by TKO. As BJPenn.com noted, it was his first finish since October 2019, when he knocked out James Vick with an upkick from his back. Price and Gerald Meerschaert both closed out their careers on that card, according to Yahoo Sports and MMA Mania.
At the post-fight press conference, Price told MMA Junkie and other reporters the win carried weight beyond the result. “It means so much just to know the career wasn’t a waste,” he said. He talked about sacrificing time with his family and said it was all worth it.
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Retirement still doesn’t sound airtight, though. “I’m a prizefighter,” Price said that night. “I fight. But it has to be agreed upon with my family. My management is my family.” He also threw out an open invitation for grappling, saying “hit me up for some UFC BJJ. I’ll come grapple anybody.”
In a second clip Helwani shared, Price said any future fight would have to be about him. He described spending half his career taking short-notice bouts to bail out other people’s cards. Now, he said, he wants a deal that actually pays off for his household. “I got seven kids,” Price said. “I gotta make sure every one of them is counting now.”
He also sat down with Andre Fili, who flattened Kai Kamaka III with a head kick on the same card, for an episode of UFC Unfiltered released Tuesday.
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My take: this is about as clean an exit as anyone in this sport gets. Price was out, the phone rang, and he turned a four-fight skid into a stoppage on his way out the door. That kind of ending should be left alone. If his family signs off on something later, the grappling offer is the right lane. A UFC BJJ match lets him get paid for the chaos he always brought without taking another round of damage. Somebody at the Performance Institute should take him up on it before he finishes ripping down houses with his brother.
