Kendall Grove is on his way out of the sport, and he refuses to sugar coat it.
In his fifteen year professional career, Kendall Grove has fought a laundry list of tough opponents. A former Ultimate Fighter winner from back in season three, Grove of late has been plying his trade in Bellator. After dropping a title shot in 2015 for the promotion’s middleweight title, Grove has gone 2-2. Coming off two straight losses, to John Salter and Alexander Shlemenko, he’s looking to turn things around against A.J. Matthews, who’s on a skid of his own.
Grove, who says he’s “happy with what I’ve done in the sport,” says he’ll likely retire once he fights out his current contract. He addressed the media on Wednesday ahead of his Bellator 193 bout with Matthews in Temecula, CA. In a candid exchange, he spoke of losing his father prior to his fight with Salter, and where he stands in the game today.
“Shlmenko, I lost. F***, he got me. My liver still feels it” he said of his Bellator 162 loss from 2016. “But my last fight, I did everything right, but John [Salter] also did too. I hate making excuses, this is not an excuse, I’m just saying where my state of mind was. I lost my dad, like two, three months before that. I did his service, I did everything, I was keeping it together for my family, my brother, my sister. I had to put on his service.”
“I cried, but I never really let it out. I never really had a chance to” he continued. “I took the fight because I was like ‘okay, I want to win one for my dad.’ Maybe I did it premature.” Grove, in an honest and revealing moment, admitted that he put heart before head. “‘F*** it, John Salter’ — maybe I didn’t respect him enough. I respected him, but I didn’t. I felt like my will and my heart and my motivation of me winning one for my dad would overcome.”
It didn’t. Instead, he was choked out by Salter.
Worse, not only had Grove lost his father, with whom he was close — “Every fight, I talked to my dad” — he also lost his grandfather and brother. “Within a year, I lost three key figures, role models, figures who I respected and loved to death.”
The end result was that “physically I could have fought anybody and possibly won, but just mentally, I was just — f*** I wasn’t there.”
He’s here now, but he’s also brutally honest about where he is in the sport. And he admits that retirement is on the horizon. Probably after he fights out his contract.
Beyond that, “I don’t give a f*** about the title. That’s f***ing out of reach. This game is young bucks” he exclaimed. “I’ve been knocked out X amount of times. I’ve been choked out X amount of times. I had wars X amount of times. My body doesn’t react the same way how it did ten years ago. People might look at this like ‘aww he’s fucking done,’ and maybe I am. But I get to do it again tomorrow night. So f*** yourselves!” he finished with a laugh.
Catch the full scrum with Kendall Grove, who also addressed the (slim) possibility of fighting in Hawaii for the UFC, below.
