Kurt Pellegrino's triumphs in the sport of MMA are shadowed by his failures. Not the failures of the professional variety, mind you. He's immensely learned from those.
It's the failures stemming from his life outside the cage: his decision to shut out everything not related to fighting, his insistence on isolation during training camp, and his willingness to separate himself from those who love him.
During a training camp, he missed the first words of his newborn daughter, which was "Dad."
Pellegrino's wife, Melissa, recently gave birth to a son, and he doesn't want to miss his first words. Pellegrino is 32 years old. He's been competing and fighting since he was 12. He could fail again in MMA, but he doesn't want to fail again with his family.
"I couldn't train for a fight now if my life depended on it," Pellegrino told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio).
Of course, he doesn't want to leave the sport on a loss. He's fallen short in his past two UFC fights – most recently a split-decision loss to Gleison Tibau at UFC 128. That disappointment came after a huge push to recover following two knee surgeries that could have kept him on the bench for a lot longer than the nine months he took before jumping back into the octagon.
Pellegrino is an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and he realizes now that his ego might have been pushing him down a path he didn't necessarily want to travel. Thinking back, he said a victory over Fabricio Camoes at UFC 111 may have been the turning point in which he felt he had nothing left to prove. He was almost choked out in that fight but battled back to cinch his own choke.
Yet he continued to fight on.
And it's a scary idea thinking about the further damage he could have taken. He's had three knee surgeries and a shattered hand; in a 2008 fight with Alberto Crane, he got a tooth kicked through the side of his face by taking a headkick, and the resulting jaw injury caused him migraines for months. This is all fairly recent.
A boxing fan, Pellegrino is all too aware of the cautionary tales of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, who fought well past their primes. Tyson quit on the stool in the middle of his final appearance in 2005, unable to summon the will to fight. Ali met much worse a fate. He suffers from Parkinson's disease, which some believe to be a consequence of repeated beatings he took later in his career.
Pellegrino (15-6 MMA, 7-4 UFC) also has put a professional boxing match on his bucket list, so not every one of his reasons for possible retirement are working in concert. He just can't summon the will to fight at this moment, and he's set a timeline for deciding whether the feelings are temporary or permanent.
"If I make it past the new year, I'll never fight again," he said.
What he's sure of is that his most recent loss is not the reason for his hiatus. He's not moping in that haze of defeat. When he called UFC matchmaker Joe Silva to inform him of his decision not to renew his UFC contract, Silva said he saw it coming.
"Me retiring has nothing to do with losing to Gleison Tibau whatsoever," he said. "Tibau is one of the most fearsome fighters in the UFC. The guy could fight at 185. Even if he kicked my butt up and down the octagon, I was still going to do what I was going to do."
Pellegrino is, in fact, grateful for everything that the UFC has done for him in this five years with the organization.
"Those guys have helped me so much," he said. "They're the reason I was able to buy a house, and a car, and have kids. If it wasn't for their organization, I wouldn't be talking to you guys today."
But to dishonor opponents by not taking them seriously is something he can't stomach.
"Even if I was fighting in the local show down here, Ring of Combat, I would still tell the promoter that I can't fight right now," he said. "My head's not into fighting. And if you're head's not into fighting, how would you fight in that show, let alone the UFC?"
So maybe you'll see him in a boxing ring sometime before the end of the year – if the urge to fight strikes.
"Which would be great because if I'm losing, I'm just going to take the guy down and throw him out of the ring," he joked.
But MMA isn't something he'll be doing any time soon.
"Let other people get their face beat in for a little bit," Pellegrino said. "(I'll) see if I miss it. Right now, I don't miss it."
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