“A warrior who never gave up on himself,” Darren Elkins enters the octagon for the final time Saturday night to face Yadier del Valle in his retirement bout at UFC Vegas 120. Elkins announced this would be his “last dance” when the promotion revealed the matchup, and he explained his decision during media day Wednesday.
“I’m older in age now, but mostly I’m starting to get hurt a little bit more often,” Elkins said. “Getting to train all the time is taking more of a toll on my body than used to, so it’s time. I mean, I’ve been contemplating it for a while and I just talked to my family, worked it all out. I’m like, you know what? I’ve always wanted to lay my gloves in the octagon and do it where most people don’t get that chance, right? They either get cut, or they just have to say on social media that they retired. I wanted to be in the moment, be able to lay my gloves down and ride off the sunset.”
Elkins said it wasn’t “that tough” of a decision considering the damage he’s put his body through after competing 30 times under the UFC banner since 2010 for a promotional record of 19-11, but feels “blessed to be still doing something I love to do.”
“Man, it’s been fun,” Elkins said. “There’s been some downs, there’s been some ups, but dang, I never thought I’d be doing this for a living for this long. It was cool just to see the evolution of the game and be a part of the evolution, right? I started over 16 years ago and the reason why I’m still here is because I kept on evolving my game, so I can be proud about it. I’ve seen a lot of guys that stop evolving and that’s when I usually get kicked out of the UFC, they start losing. I knew how to entertain, put on entertaining fights and keep evolving.”
The 42-year-old veteran admitted he considered retirement in the past, especially after losing to Hacran Dias in Brazil back in 2014, but followed the advice to switch teams and that led to a six-fight winning streak against the likes of Dennis Bermudez and Michael Johnson, snapped only by future UFC champion Alexander Volkanovski.
Elkins revealed he’s interested in staying active in forms of competition that don’t include punches and kicks to the face, like wrestling for RAF, but promised his wife he wouldn’t even consider stepping into a ring for bare-knuckle boxing matches.
“I’d probably die,” Elkins said with a laugh when asked about BKFC. “My MMA fights are bloody. Could you imagine me in that? No. I promised my wife I wouldn’t even look at that place [laughs].”
Elkins’ final UFC bout comes against the much younger del Valle, a 10-1 talent who was 10 years old when Elkins made his pro MMA debut in Chicago. “The Cuban Problem” dropped a decision to Jordan Leavitt in his most recent appearance after scoring back-to-back first-round rear-naked choke finishes over Connor Matthews and Isaac Dulgarian in his first UFC bouts.
“This is the UFC, there’s not going to be any favors, you know?” Elkins said of the matchup. “I expected it. I mean, I’ve always knew what the game was. I think that’s the thing why I never got surprised is I knew what the game was about. You got to go out there and do your job. That’s any place you work for. If you’re not doing your job, you’re not doing it at a high level, they can get rid of you at any time.
“I expected when I said I was going be a retirement fight that I was going to probably be a younger guy. I’m one of the older guys in the division, so it’s going to be a younger guy and probably a pretty tough guy because they know when I’m in the octagon, it’s going to be a crazy fight.”
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