Las Vegas, NV — It’s the final fight week of Marion Reneau’s career.
“Everything’s happening so fast. Everything’s coming full force,” she noted during the UFC Vegas 31 media day on Wednesday. “And I am taking it in. I’m just like, let me enjoy each moment, let me think about every question, really answer whole-heartedly, stuff like that.”
When it came time to decide on calling it a career, Reneau explained that “back when I signed my four-fight contract, I knew at the end of that, I’d be 43, 44 years old. And I was like, everybody keeps asking me ‘when are you going to retire, when are you going to retire?’ And in my head I’m like ‘that’s when I’m going to retire, and if the UFC allows me, I want to finish out on my own terms, I would like to finish out my contract.'”
Reneau took the mentality of putting on a show for the fans in each and every fight as a result. “I didn’t tell anybody. Didn’t tell my husband, I didn’t tell my coach. I just knew. I put it in the back of my head, and I just knew.”
That, in part, was to ensure that no one thought that mentally, she was checked out. She only announced her retirement when she did so that fans could get on board for her last fight. And to keep the UFC in the know.
Reneau made the call to her manager after her last fight, against Macy Chiasson, informing him that she planned to retire. And she’s still at peace with her decision. “I’m good. I am good. I am telling you right now, I am looking forward to not stepping on the scale again, I am looking forward to eating whatever I want, I am looking forward to being less obsessive about being in the game. I completely threw my whole entire self into mixed martial arts and I didn’t stop.”
For her final fight, Reneau faces the returning Miesha Tate, a former bantamweight champion coming back from retirement.
“You can’t write this any better. You have one coming in, you have one going out,” Reneau observed.
Years ago, when she was 36, Reneau tried out for The Ultimate Fighter. Had she made it, it would have been the Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate season in 2013. After making it to the second day of the selection process, Reneau was told she was too old.
Two years later, she would make her promotional debut at UFC 182. “In all honestly I’m so happy I did not get picked,” Reneau told Cageside Press. “I laugh at it now, I don’t think I could handle being in a house full of women, alphas, female fighters. I need to be the alpha. And so I don’t think it would have been my cup of tea.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 31 media day scrum with Marion Reneau above. The event takes place this Saturday, July 17 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, NV.
